


Ekphrasis

by IraDeu



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:39:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraDeu/pseuds/IraDeu
Summary: In which rewrites of support conversations are the backbone for a rewrite of the plot. Includes:- much gay, nonzero trans- the concubine wars- ryoma and xander having to deal with the consequences of their actions for once- genderqueer Takumi? honestly not sure how that happened but welp- these characters as Adults making Big Decisions- Valla rewrite that makes the story make more sense- two revolutions and the death of monarchy- no porn!!! welcome to ace-friendly fly space enjoy your stayNote: this should be comprehensible if your only interaction with the game is reading support conversations on the wiki





	1. (the brothers they've killed)

_There was once a sheltered Hoshidan princess who was captured by the last Nohrian king. In return, the Hoshidans captured a Nohrian princess, a sage, and the two were raised by their new families as one of their own - until, one day, a search party found the sheltered princess and brought her back to Hoshido._

_The sheltered princess, being inexperienced with pain, was horrified at the war, and vowed to bring the two countries together. The sage princess joined her, and, through their bravery, began to unite the two kingdoms, until all of the heirs from both Nohr and Hoshido were together in their mission to bring peace._

_Both countries were then made to sign a great treaty, and it is one that has lasted until this day._

_The Sage Princess revealed a greater enemy, a force that seeped beneath them, and the heirs and the sheltered princess fought beside her to defeat it._

_Through their hard work, the unknown enemy was finally defeated - but to ensure that they woud never again hurt the citizens of Nohr or Hoshido, the sheltered princess and the sage princess had to seal the boundary between the unknown enemy and the two kingdoms._

_The two were never seen again - but it is said that the heirs were wise and benevolent heroes when they returned, having grown wiser from their travels. And we still celebrate the sheltered princess and the sage princess today, with our dragon festival._

* * *

Garon was a nice father, once. And for the rest of their lives the Nohrian heirs would insist that Garon was a kind man on his good days. They would talk about how  _specially_ he treated them, how he would trust them with things he wouldn't other siblings, how he would compliment them, how he would promise to keep them safe, how he would watch them when they trained, made them feel beautiful and whole. 

They would insist on this, even on his deathbed, even as he condoned their massacres. 

And even after everything, they still kept faith. They still believed. 

 

***

 

The official reason that Garon took mistresses was that his wife was thought to be infertile. Garon's oldest children were all from maids. 

The unofficial reason was "this is Nohr, and we have a tradition of allowing the king to screw whoever he'd like for a few decades, and just because the plebians are talking about enlightenment doesn't mean that anything has to change where it really matters". 

In fact, his wife was perfectly fertile; five years into Garon's reign, Xander was born. The fifth of Garon's children. Absolutely no fuss was raised within the castle. They knew how things worked, here. 

***

Xander was not raised by his mother. Garon had married her because she was a political asset - not only a powerful combatant, but also a princess from the British regions. Keeping her constantly in power would prevent London from revolting. Sure, they had killed their mages in the witch hunts, but their mechanics were second-to-none, and rumors were flooding through France and Germany that their guns were now capable of overpowering a low-tier mage. 

Xander was raised by the various servants of Castle Krankenburg, passed between various maids, fed on rough unsteady magic and cow's milk and the light impersonal affection of castle staff. Sure, he was loved. 

But not as a child. 

Xander's mother would not let him be killed, while alive. She was far too powerful - the risk of her wrath was far scarier than any sort of benefit that could be garnered from the elimination of a child that was almost guaranteed to be a serious contender for the crown. 

She left him alone. He learned, fast. 

Training started at age three; how to hold a sword, how to run quickly, how to watch, how to reveal nothing and say everything. The precise genealogy of the Nohrian crown. How politics worked. Basic magic, if any affinity was found, though that was doubtful given his bloodline. What poison looked, smelled, felt like. How to identify a Hoshidan spy. 

 

That sort of thing. The sort of thing that every knight knew, and the sort of solid base that any princely education could be built upon. Xander would learn this until he was ten, at which point he would be tested for his proficiencies and they would be expanded upon, in addition to the standard round of castle politics that any Nohrian heir needed to know. 

If, at any point, Xander snapped, then they would simply bend him back into shape. There was no place for weakness, here - he would be swallowed whole. It was for his own good, that any childishness was destroyed. Through our suffering we shall be made whole. 

***

It was an accident. And besides - he was only five. He was almost supposed to act out. This was normal. He was fine, and there was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. 

Garon was just... finicky. That's all. That's it. Daddy likes his quiet. 

His name was Phillip. Xander and he had been playing inside when Xander kicked over a vase and broke it, watching all of the tiny shards of porcelain skitter across the hallway. 

A maid had come to see what had happened and burst into tears. 

Xander was called into the throne room five minutes later. (There were murmurs about _family heirloom_ and _magic_ , Xander remembers. And _temper_ and _afraid_.) 

Garon asked Xander who did it, because Xander was seen as responsible. Phillip had done things like this before. Xander was only five, and, according to Garon, five-year-olds did not contain malice. 

Xander never saw Phillip again, and his room gathered dust for a long, long while. 

* * *

 

Camilla always looked back on stories about her childhood with fondness. Those were  _her_! How quaint, to imagine that, once, Camilla had been such a small child! Isn't the preservation of identity such a funny thing, resulting in such interesting paradoxes? This little thing that led to me _is_ me! 

If Camilla could figure out a way to say that in a way that sounded normal, she would, just to get people to stop telling her stories about when she was young. Camilla does not care about a three-year-old that has nothing to do with her.

There are more important things for her to worry about. 

Still, Camilla is polite. Camilla nods and listens, because Camilla wants to know what this other person is like. It is always  _fascinating_ to get a glimpse into the mind of someone that is so unlike you, and Camilla always thirsts for tiny details. They are what make her role as the doting older sister easy, worth it. (She would not have bothered, if there had been no opportunity for secrets. She admits this to herself, now.) 

They say she was a prodigy. And always, always kind. 

***

Camilla was a bastard, like most of Garon's children. Xander's mother had been grievously injured in a skirmish involving Spanish anarchists, and the castle doctors had recommended her to never have another child, and to not have sex until she had healed fully, which of course had put Garon into a terrible, terrible mood. Legend has it that that was the day Garon decided to annex France. 

Camilla was just a special sort of bastard. She had been quietly picked up from the French countryside, after a high-end escort in Paris had given birth to a child with distinctly Royal features. (Not that they hadn't tried to keep her - France had kept its mages around, and her mother had put up a hell of a fight to keep her daughter. She had died screaming that she wouldn't allow her own child to be taken away from Paris, the only beautiful city in left in Nohr, a city filled with sunlight and green and food.) 

A four-year-old french girl named Chloé was guided into the sunless Castle Krankenburg with zero allies and zero training. 

She was tossed off to the maids, who called her Camilla, despite her insisting that her name was Chloé. (Her mother had told her that her name meant growth. She would later look it up - it was an epithet, it turned out, of a long-dead Roman goddess of the harvest.) She was proud of it. 

She later looked up what Camilla meant, and decided she hated it.

_Noble. Free-born._

_Servant of the temple._

It felt like branding. That is what you were, and this is what you shall be.

***

No child was respected, within Castle Krankenburg. Childish traits were seen as weakness and anything that was incapable of looking after itself was a liability. 

Camilla was just... special. She was, after all, the daughter of a prostitute. At least Garon's other mistresses had the common courtesy to be castle staff or visiting nobles. Camilla was bringing scum, gutter filth, into the family bloodlines. If this was allowed to go on, think of the damage that could be done to the royal blood. And if she decided to go back to her mother's land and marry a commoner - what if lay French held the blood of the dragons? They would become impossible to put down. Think of the revolutions! The last civil war between France and Germany had cost King Charles Paris. 

Best to break the child, before any ill came of it. Put her on the regular regimen, but place a higher standard. Any signs of deviance could be easily interpreted as revolution. 

Camilla flourished, in her training. She was three when she first found her magic, little wisps of it to grab flowers and curl hair and take cinnamon rolls still hot from her mother's oven. 

Four when she had to figure out how to use it. 

Elizabeth, they said, was going to try for Brynhildir, one day. Elizabeth was her father's favorite. Elizabeth didn't want to be bothered by anyone who would interfere. And besides - everyone knew who Camilla's mother was. She would sully the family name, if she was allowed to be treated as royalty. 

It was entirely self-defense, Camilla claims. Elizabeth had seen her as a threat.

***

Camilla's first friend had not been Xander. Camilla's first friend had been named Sarah, and she was the second-oldest of Garon's children.   
Sarah was the sort of person that seemed distant from all the chaos around her. She held Brynhildir. She was strong and sweet and kind. She tried not to get involved in messes, and was incredibly kind to everything she focused on. She was tall and thin and almost ghostlike, graceful in a way that Camilla wasn't and thought she never would be, like flowing water, like light. She was a solid decade older than Camilla, and Camilla adored her with all her heart. Sarah was a mother to her.

Sarah was the one that taught Camilla how to hold an axe properly, how to catch a wyvern, what it meant to love. What right and wrong was, and when an authority had overstepped its boundaries, and what to do to keep yourself strong when such happened.

How to comfort someone, when they were upset over something you did not understand, because that was a skill that was not taught nearly enough, these days. She dispensed the sort of wisdom that all twenty-year-olds think they have constantly, and Camilla drank it up, desperate for someone to teach her.

Sarah didn't correct her when she called her "mother".

That was probably a bad thing, in hindsight. Nothing comes from hoping like that.

***

They were told not to talk to her.

Not that they would have, anyway. Azura looked weird and acted quiet and _watched_ and cried, and was the only child in the entire Castle Krankenburg whose mother had died at court. She became a free agent at age seven, which meant that she was prime for bullying. She was other. She was powerful. She was strange.

Camilla and Azura only ever had one meaningful interaction.

Azura had gone out into the courtyard. (Castle Krankenburg's courtyard was shit, but Azura liked flowers, liked sunlight, and those that are starved will take anything thrown at them and gorge themselves on it until they die of shock.)

Some of the older siblings had followed her and cornered her, until she was screaming and crying and summoning up tendrils of strange magic that, alone and untrained, were nothing in the face of her older threatened siblings.

They started to hit her. Azura screamed.

Camilla came out into the courtyard and _stared_.

"Help me," Azura said. "Please."

And Camilla looked at her and cried.

***

Azura had been let go ten minutes later with bones that were almost certainly broken. An incompetent maid had been sent to heal her, and she left scars, scars that Azura would spend the rest of her life learning how to hide, how to bury. 

Remember, Azura. One day, you shall bring peace to Valla. You are our queen. 

* * *

Xander was eight when he learned Camilla's name. 

About the average age when factions between Nohrian heirs started to form, historically, and Garon always loved tradition. Loved how it could justify just about anything. Usually, siblings were pushed together by panicking mothers who wanted an edge, a chance at some security. The children would turn on each other later. For now, this gave them a better chance. For now. 

Xander was eight when he learned Camilla's name.   
About the average age when factions between Nohrian heirs started to form, historically, and Garon always loved tradition. Loved how it could justify just about anything. Usually, siblings were pushed together by panicking mothers who wanted an edge, a chance at some security. The children would turn on each other later. For now, this gave them a better chance. For now.

And that was really all that mattered, really. In the face of black skies and poverty and desperation, another day was all anyone could see. (Ignore the look on your child's face when she sees her brother claim the throne and knows that you will be disappointed, because second is not enough, not safe. Heir apparent is so far away from Queen it may as well not exist.)

Xander's mother hated Camilla, hated her heritage, hated everything she represented, but she was strong and smart and kind and, if they stuck together, Xander had a great chance at surviving. 

And they were friends, from before: Xander pinned against the wall, an older boy with a claim to Siegfried grinning and Camilla was never the best at magic but she focused on her breathing and her focus was broken by a piercing scream and the sound of burning hair and hot iron and Xander grabbed her and ran inside and shouted something about a lamp had fallen over. 

Neither of them, they remember, had any idea what Camilla had done. Xander distinctly remembers thinking that Samuel had gotten in trouble for hurting him and had been banished. Only in hindsight did their crime become clear, and Xander was surprised to find that he didn't feel an ounce of remorse. 

***

Camilla remembers that incident, but not the way Xander does. She said that she saw Azura and said that it was a simple act of atonement. 

Sarah died, shortly after that. Camilla never told anyone a single detail of how it happened. Let's not disrespect the dead, she thought. 

Sarah didn't want to go on. 

* * *

 

When Leo was two, and it was determined that he was hardy enough to warrant attention, he was given the room three to the left of Xander's. The one with the open window with the view of the courtyard and no vase. 

It was assumed that Leo and Xander would be allies, given that they had the same mother. (Or so she said - though a maid had gone missing recently, and no-one was brave enough to ask the Queen questions.) And, besides - Leo was practically dripping with magic. He had been warping his wet nurse for food since he was a few months old. 

Leo had been born near the end of the twenty years delineated for a Nohrian ruler to sire children. (A tradition designed by older siblings in parliament to prevent... awkwardness, given how useful it would be to be an escort of the only person in Nohr with guaranteed legitimate standing. When the first blind child was born, they blamed his age, the weather. When the third one was, they dug deeper.) 

He had no hope for the throne. Leo's best strategy would be to stay alive for as long as possible, to make himself a useful ally. At four, he was sleeping with a tome under his pillow and a sword beneath his bed. 

Camilla found she rather liked that about him. A ruthless streak that would have been drowned out anywhere with light. Sarah would have found him to be an incredible tragedy - but Camilla was not Sarah. Sarah was dead. Castle Krankenburg had no light, only shadows and places darker. Only secrets and their sources and places to pull them out, tooth by rotten tooth. 

Oh, they tried to pretend. But they belonged here, amid darkness and secrecy and lies. They flourished. They shone, swallowing up hope and light and wonder. There was no way, Leo noticed, to tell where Camilla's pupil stopped and her iris began. 

Leo's first kill was at age six, under Camilla's careful guidance. A boy had information on Xander that could tarnish his reputation. Something about a young butler that had vanished from court about a week ago, despite being very close to Xander. Don't question it, Camilla. Protect your brother. 

Leo found it was almost laughably easy. Johnathon died in his sleep, choking on his own vomit. 

Camilla thought that was rather a nice touch. Oh, she knew it was all a game to him, that there was no way for him to understand what he had done, the stain on his soul. 

But if God had forsaken them by leaving them in the blighted place, then Camilla had no intention of being good. She would dream of the French countryside and wake up crying. 

***

Garon obviously favored Xander. It was obvious, really. Xander was sent out on a mission to put down a minor revolt in a few Slavic provinces when he was fourteen. The sort of responsibility? Either Garon loved him or wanted him dead. 

Garon was unpredictable and terrifying - hadn't all of them been beaten by him for some esoteric offense, at one point or another? Hadn't all of them felt their complaints crushed under the gaze of one that did not have the time to care? 

How were they to rationalize a power that refused to let anything but what it wanted exist, if they did not adore it? They were nothing. Garon was their god. 

*** 

Leo found that the attention he got from a kill was the best part about it. He had fifteen living siblings. What was he to do? The older ones were constantly fighting, constantly vying for power. It was almost entertaining, to watch the firstborns to try and wheedle their way into their father's favor. 

Leo knew he would never have that. He knew so strong he stopped caring. 

Xander found no thrill in murder, he knew. Xander had found a flair for disgrace, for simply outshining people. For making them make fools of themselves. The court had no room for fools. Easy, and justifiably guiltless, even if the results were exactly the same. 

Garon would send Xander on missions. Xander would send Leo on... trips. Xander would shine, and Leo would slip behind the curtains and turn out the lights, and Xander would get the applause and roses and Leo would get his paycheck, and it worked. (No-one tried to control Camilla. Not after Sarah. Leo knew that that had fucked her up, even if Camilla had refused to speak after it. She would come to help, but not if asked, and Xander trusted her, God help his soul.) 

Confirmed death two for Leo was at age seven. Caroline had insulted Xander. Something about his appearance, maybe? Whatever it was, it had wounded bad, and Xander's face had twisted itself into a knot when he heard it. 

"You know, Xander really looks like Dad, that way. It's kinda scary." 

***

They'd call you everything that had been done to you. 

Leo did not love his mother. He was so obviously a tool. So, so obviously. By now, it was obvious that his mother didn't have a lick of magical talent, and therefore couldn't be his mother. And the way she acted, too - though, if you went straight off that, she wasn't Xander's mother, either.

Leo hated her, really. Hated her when she hit him, until he couldn't, anymore. Too dangerous. If you hate her, you shall fight back, but your hate shall grow inside you until it has no choice but to dig into yourself.

Close your eyes. You deserve it. This is the price of your mother's love. 

He idolized her. The world made no sense, but, if he could find a single solid fact, he could build a reality around it that would keep him safe. His mother and father were good. Therefore, Leo was wrong whenever they punished him. Therefore, Leo needed to do whatever they said, without question. This would make him good. This would make the pain stop. 

Do not forget to breathe. 

Camilla showed him how to cover up bruises and he was infinitley grateful. 

*** 

She paced around at night like she had a broken heart. She would pray to the moon - the goddess of the hunt - that she would leave her brothers' beds untouched. That she would not answer their calls for death, because Camilla did not know who she would become if she had to follow them into the abyss. Would she still simply assist? Or would she become the most ruthless of them all?  She didn't want to know.

She was a foolish teenager, and she knew it, but she also knew what was wrong and what was right. She had seen the sun, and clung to her memories of light, even as they died within her.

She knew she wouldn't last long, here. She would forget. She was Xander's second-in-command. Her soul was doomed.

Her final prayer, ever, was that Leo would somehow keep her memories, that he would develop some sort of morality, that something in him would soak in light.

He mentioned, the next day, having a strange dream, and Camilla noticed how the edge had been taken off his ruthlessness, his pragmatism, and she pretended to believe, just for a moment, that her prayers had been answered.

Leo had been born with dark brown hair. Over the next year, the color shifted to a yellow that didn't even seem like a true hair color - more like a sort of sunlight, or maybe wheat. Unnatural, but beautiful, so no-one bothered questioning it.

Camilla stopped believing because she was afraid of her power, afraid of the gods, afraid of what she would do in the future if she knew that she could get all she wanted if she only just asked.

***

Leo picks fights.

Leo self-sabotages. Leo secretly wants nothing more than for everything to fall apart so badly that he doesn't have to try to pick up the pieces. To clean up someone else's mess.

Even if that mess happens to be himself. Leo cannot handle a danger larger than the absolute minimum. Doesn't know how to do anything but break.

And, besides - he deserves it. A fratricide deserves ruin. Justice in its purest form. He would create his own Hell, and wouldn't God be so proud when Cain walked in sorry.

He doesn't get nightmares - but every single day is a constant barrage of reminders of those he's killed. By age fourteen, he's got the ghosts of three children hanging on his conscience. He can tell himself that it was kill or be killed, but there's nothing quite like the look on an eight-year-old's face when she's dying. Any punishment is too little - and, if he has to deal with _every goddamn thing_ reminding him of what he's done, then... so be it. If he has to spend the rest of his life thinking that everything's a threat, then he's fine with that. He knows his God, and his God is cruel but his God is fair. And if this is what keeps him out of Hell, then Leo gladly accepts it.

He is _terrified_ \- but he shows his terror through his analysis. He becomes strong instead of brittle. He had decided that this could never happen again, and... and he would change. He would not be the same person, ever again.

***

Xander, despite it all, was not the best candidate for Siegfried when his time came. He had recently been poisoned, and, while it hadn't succeeded in killing him outright, it might as well have. Siegfried did not favor the weak, and Siegfried did not wait.

Which was how, on shaking legs, Xander found himself pressing a knife into Benedict's neck, watching little beads of blood being drawn from the edge of his shining, shining knife. Felt the skin give and saw Benedict's eyes flash open and heard the sound of choking and drowning and screaming and bubbles. Felt blood pour over his hands, onto the knife, onto the sheets, into the mattress.

They say that you can't clean out bloodstains.

Nohr needed him. He would be different, once he took the crown. He would change things. He would be just, and the sun would one day shine on Castle Krankenburg and no-one would be hungry and no-one would be afraid.

He just had to get there, first. 

***

Xander describes being picked by Siegfried as being drowned in light. Like having your insides replaced with God, and collapsing inward, the magic of the sword locking to you. 

Leo screamed the first time he touched Brynhildir and didn't stop for hours, and was placed in the infirmary and refused to speak of it. 

* * *

 

Elise was born on Garon's twenty-second year. 

Her mother had been put to death, and the only reason that Elise hadn't been too was becauase Xander pitched a minor fit about her magical ability. A healer in this land would be useful. Just look at how weak our people are, he said. She would be able to lower complaints. The people would love her. The fact that she would be technically illegitimate only strengthened her charm. She would never rise against them, never be able to raise a hand, would never have the power required to threaten. 

Camilla tried to be her mother, tried to make her come out sweet. Brynhildir and Siegfried had picked her brothers (do not think about Sarah), chosen them for death. Kingship was virtually guaranteed. Now, long-term survival was prioritized, limiting the powers of the remaining siblings. 

Look past tomorrow, Camilla. Because someone's going to try and kill you in two, ten, twenty years, and you are not allowed to die. You belong here, in Castle Krankenburg, and Castle Krankenburg has sunk itself into your body and will not let you go until it allows you to. There is no escape. 

And Camilla could slowly feel herself becoming obsolete. (That was the right term - wasn't it? Or maybe it was empty. Maybe she had let herself go. Maybe she had given up. Camilla found that she didn't quite know how to imagine herself as anything other than who she was right now, as if all of her ambition had been sucked clean out.) 

So. Charisma. What did people like, and how could she make that part of herself?

And she found that it was easier to kill when people wanted you. So much easier.

So much easier to kill when the king would look at you with the eyes he looked at your mother with. So much easier to kill when people would scratch at each other to get a chance to touch you. So much easier to kill when people were too blinded by their cocks to see anything, anything at all.

Elise would be safe, even if it killed her.

She would love, and, through that, become lovable.

***

Nobody would help her, she figured out. Absolutely fucking nobody. Her mother had died, and Elise figured out far too young that her siblings, while kind people, were under so much pressure that they had to be only out to protect themselves. That was simply how it worked here, Elise thought. If they were nice to her, it was because it was in their own best interest, not because they loved her.

And if they're not going to take care of me, I've got to take care of myself.

She was tragically young when she started to teach things herself.

Sure, Leo taught her how to read, but she had been the one to teach herself how to find the books in the library, how to move around the ladder. How to patch her own clothes, because the servants were too powerful to be trusted in any capacity whatsoever. Too little incentive to help the royal children for any helpfulness to feel real.

And Camilla was stifling. Elise loved her, but... it never quite felt like Camilla loved anyone, not in a way that felt right. Camilla was a broken person. Camilla was out to take care of herself - and if she needed affection, she could easily farm it through care of Elise. Her love was sidways and twisted and never quite fit.

Elise understood the sentiment, even if she sort of hated it. She hated feeling used, but... this was use for the best possible cause.

She tried not to think about it too much. She tried.

And so what if everyone treated her like a child? At least, that way, she wouldn't be seen as a threat.

***

She became focused on her own care, after a while.

That, coupled with her complete lack of experience at figuring out what she wanted and needed, lead to her having almost a sort of hoarding complex. She had no idea what she wanted, so she wanted everything. She was the only one of the four to have collections, because she could never quite decide which one she wanted to play with, which one was her favorite, which one was the best.

She took more pleasure from knowing that she could play with any doll she wanted than from actually playing with her dolls. There was a sort of insurance in their quantity. She would never be bored, would always be happy, and that was the most important thing, in this castle without light. She was a starved man that had found food and was now willing to gorge himself. Thank god the starved man wasn't fed enough to go into shock.

* * *

 

There are many things one can say about Garon that are both damning and true, but you could not say that he did not firmly know what he was doing when he went about to destroy his children.

Children, he knew, would latch on to anything that gives them attention, that makes them feel special. It's what they do.

So he fed them scraps of attention, sent them on missions that would have troubled men thrice their age, lavishly praised them when they returned. Punished those that disobeyed swiftly and brutally.

Largely left them alone, except for interventions in castle politics that were as random as they were brutal. Those that walked away alive from these experiences were often ridiculously attached to a patriarch that had maintained their safety.

***

Only Leo knew.

Elise smiled and wore frilly dresses and played with dolls, and Everyone believed it. She was adorable. She was sweet.

Some of them even joked that her mother had to be a Hoshidan. She exuded sunlight. Something kind had seeped into her bones. (This, of course, was purely a jest. No Hoshidan would ever step foot in Castle Krankenburg. You are fine without that which you have never had.)

Elise watched. Lesson one: People cared about the princes, but less about the princesses.

And less about the servants.

Power is inversely proportional to how closely people watch you.

When she first found the maid standing, gasping, outside of Xander's room. Elise didn't even think twice about it.

The maid was found decomposed in a closet three years later, and everyone said that it was a tragic suicide.

Lesson two: Servants are considered off-limits, by some unofficial rule. Some sort of incentive, to keep them coming.

Breaking rules like this is virtually taboo. Something unthinkable, undoable.

And Elise didn't care.

The servants grew scared, then. Which meant that anyone that watched could grab power. This was an unheard-of shift in the politics of the court, and the maids would be desperate to keep their foothold.

Which was how Elise got Flora to become her personal assassin.

"Stay with me," she said. "Be my friend, and they'll be too scared of Camilla to hurt you. You'll just have to do me a couple favors! It'll be fun!"

Nicholas.

And Leo knew.

*** 

And then Azura was gone, as quietly as she came, and they wanted to miss her and never quite could. 

***

The end of an era, they said, just before the knights dragged a child into the throne room and left her there, crying and dazed.

All ten of the remaining siblings were herded into an adjoining room and given strict instructions that anyone who laid a finger on the new girl would be better off dead.

Camilla blinked. No, it couldn't be this easy. Just act as the new kid's protector and she'd be safe. What did they say her name was? Corrin?

Camilla found her room first - the big one at the end of the hallway that Henry had slept in. The one with the nice view of the training grounds at the top of the castle.

She knocked.

After a few seconds, the girl opened the door. She was small - older than Leo, maybe, but if so not by much - and had just the hint of a tan.   
This baby was probably the result of some _diplomatic negotiations_ with the Fire Tribe or something. Probably politically important to keep her safe, and probably strong enough to be reckoned with. An asset.

Camilla noticed that there were bags under her eyes and a bruise on her wrist, and did not let herself think about them.

"Hello, Corrin! I'm your sister, Camilla. Do you need anything?"

Corrin smiled. "No, but thank you!"

She had a Hoshidan accent, and spoke Diplomatic like it was her native tongue.

Camilla swallowed.

"Do you need to talk to me about anything?"

"No, thanks. Actually, is there any way for me to go outside? I couldn't find the door."

"Why do you ask?"

"I wanted to know if I could play."

"Um..."

"What's wrong?"

"It's... there are... wolves, in the forest. You can't go out."

"Well, then you can protect me!"

"No, actually. It's against the rules for one of us to go outside without permission. One time, my sister Alice went into the woods and never came out."

"That must have made you so sad!"

Camilla excused herself.

***

Elise got along with Corrin best. She was the best at hiding, best at not seeming too off. Best at acting her age. She was eleven when Corrin came.

Elise was the one that taught them what Corrin's childhood had been like. Elise was the one that defined the limits of Corrin's amnesia, delineated exactly the questions not to ask, exactly what they needed to know the answer to. Elise was the one that let Corrin fuss with her hair and some other nonsense, because that was what normal fourteen-year-olds did.

They were older than that, they felt. Infinitely older.

When Corrin outgrew... whatever she did, Elise was the one that passed her over to Xander for sparring. "Be careful," she had said. "She's delicate."

And Xander was.

Garon wanted Corrin to be trained extensively in combat, even more so than the other siblings - where they studied geography and philosophy and law, Corrin was sparring.

She wasn't terribly strong, they noted, but she was brave and didn't know her own limits, which counted for a lot.

She felt like she came from somewhere else.

Maybe that was the point. 

***

Three raps at the door. Short, percussive. It was raining - he tried again. When they still didn't hear him, he started banging with his fist.   
This was absolutely beneath him, and he completely loathed it. He was a noble, for Chrissakes. This was some sort of affront to his decency.

He wondered what his parents would think.

Then, he stopped. He knew.

Why bother having kids, he wondered, if you planned on throwing them away as soon as they got to be teenagers? Was this some sort of contract? Were his parents getting out of paying their taxes by sending him away?

Was there any sort of motive that would allow for Jakob to not hate himself?

Answer: No.

Well, then. If they wouldn't give him approval, then he wouldn't bother ever needing it. It seemed that most people his age forgot that parents were also people, filled with their own flaws and pasts and _bullshit_.   
"Hello!" he shouted. Goddamnit, if nobody showed up in the next thirty seconds, he was going to climb in the window or something. There was _lightning_ , out here, and -

Someone opened the door. She looked to be about his age, with white hair and bright brown eyes and something a touch exotic about her, as if her mother had been a foreign ambassador. He had heard about those. Things never really ended well for them, but they were interesting, while they lasted.

"Hello - can you get me to - "

Jakob realized that he hadn't expected anyone to answer him when he realized he had no idea what he wanted to say next.

"Who are you?"

"I... I was a noble, once." That was closest.

"You probably don't want to stay here."

He swallowed. This girl was absolutely too nice to live in Castle Krankenburg. He had heard the stories. "Tell them that Lucas' son is here. Duke of the English provinces near the border of the Ice Tribe?"

The name felt too fluid for something he probably wouldn't ever use again.

"Okay - do you want to come inside while you wait? That storm can't have been nice to wait around in."

"I... thank you, ma'am."

"And if you need anything else, just ask me!"

By the time he had walked in, the girl had disappeared.

He took off his coat and waited.

That girl's a fool, he thought.

***

Elise found him and snatched him up and devoured him whole. He didn't mind, not really. This wasn't what he was used to, but Corrin was kind and there were too many delicious secrets to be known about the others. Like how Xander tore his anus out of what was (in Jakob's humble perspective) sheer greed, or Leo's adorable relationship with his new retainer, or Camilla's remarkable birth control apparatus, or Elise's many charms for youthfulness. 

***

On the retainer: Leo stalwartly denies knowing anything about the late Odin Dark. This is not true, and Camilla remembers him sitting on a windowsill at the top of the tower, looking at absolutely nothing, and Camilla would coax him away and he would cry like a child. 

* * *

 

And then there was no-one older than Xander and there was no way anyone could defeat Xander, and they had won. 

I've forgotten what God feels like. Death is like a stage. Shiver. You are in the center of the world. 

 


	2. (the lies they've told)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this time on Oh Boy Child Abuse: Asia, subtlety, and you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> friendly warning: expect this to be edited or deleted at any moment 
> 
> also friendly warning: I am not japanese but rather korean and I really do need to do more research but this doc has been sitting half-finished for like a year and I haven't played this game in forever and I just need to purge this from my system

Everyone knew that the Nohrians were barbarians. It followed, logically, that the assassin had to be from Nohr. The king and queen were adored in Hoshido. A return back to a peace not seen for a hundred years - Sumeragi's magic wall made the capitol feel safe for the first time in fifty years. And Aozora was renowned as a negotiator - her expertise had led to Hoshido having its first alliance in its history. (Hoshido was not known for its kindness.) 

Takumi still remembers, even now, what it was like.

The assassin was the new ninja recruit, the pale one, the one that was even more standoffish than was standard for the sort of person that would be a ninja recruit. He was sent to deliver a message to the queen, who was at the time telling Takumi a story. (Takumi was her favorite, and everyone knew.)

The assassin asked her to come into the hall to recieve a message. Takumi remembers looking through the slit at the side of the door and watching the ninja pour acid on Aozora's throat so she couldn't scream, watched the blood pour down her neck to reveal bone and watched him stab into her chest, first hitting a bone, then shoving the knife to the side, digging to find the heart.

Takumi screamed.

***

She was declared dead the following hour. Their father's sister was crowned queen the next day. Long live Queen Mikoto.

Ryoma was Mikoto's favorite - an air of restlessness, of impermanence had settled over the castle, and an heir needed to be ready at all times, in case disaster struck again.

And Takumi was pushed to the side. If he cried, he was scolded for being weak. He was quiet, he was scolded for being aloof.

But if he was vocal and brash and untrusting and mean, they either fought with his opinions or left him alone.

Takumi rather liked that.

***

The dreams started, because of course they did. 

Takumi started playing games with himself, in order to stay awake as long as possible. He got an hour or two of sleep a day, and ended up spending most of his magical energy just keeping himself awake, alive. 

And he didn't care. Not a bit. 

***

Ryoma distinctly remembers the day after Mikoto's coronation, because Mikoto had dragged him into her room and sat him down and held his hand and told him exactly of his responsibilities. She told this 14-year-old that, one day, he would be King. One day, he would rule, and that she would do everything in her power to make sure that he would be fit to do so when the time came but that he would have to help her. 

Of course it went to his head. 

Mikoto spent an hour every day for the next year detailing the subtleties of his position to him. As the world outside mourned, Ryoma was studying nationalism and fear and when it was safe to ignore the opinions of the masses. When to lie, and when to not tell the truth. (There was a difference there, Ryoma found, that was large enough to kill a man, and Mikoto instructed him in death, too, in how to kill - how to properly hold his katana to inflict the swiftest cuts, the deepest stabs, the most pain, the fastest suicide, because these were the things that Hoshidan kings needed to know. Here are your lines, Ryoma. Learn them.) 

Sumeragi was dead, and now there was no time for optimism.

Ryoma didn't believe a second of it - but Ryoma was no longer himself. Ryoma was filling a role that was larger than he was - or, if not larger, than at least greater than. Different from. His own personal convictions meant nothing.

Ryoma chooses not to remember the time a Nohrian postman, no older than ten, got lost in the woods where Ryoma was training, and Ryoma dressed in full armor let the rider fly away.

It didn't matter, anyway. If an act of treason is committed, but no-one is around to witness it...

It was his secret, really. Ryoma would not kill a Nohrian, but no-one need know that.

***

Hinata was an idiot kid that followed around some of the more ignoble samurai, and when Takumi dragged him inside saying that he was some abandoned orphan noble they agreed, because Takumi was a prince and it really didn't matter. 

Sakura wasn't sure of the exact circumstances surrounding Hinata's disappearance, but she does remember Takumi making a fit about it and never hearing from him again. 

***

And then Kamui was gone and their father with her. And the siblings answered their questions and played along and no-one was sad and it was agreed that they were doing their best to put on a strong face against the Nohrian invasion and the nobles were so proud of them. 

Hinoka had never been trained to deal with pain and let the business wash over her, didn't know what it meant when she didn't feel sorry for her father's loss, didn't know how to process her little sister gone forever. Didn't know what to do about the little girl who would give her hugs and tell her she was loved and believed and the father that spent every conversation right and Hinoka was wrong but doing her best and 

*** 

They had just invaded Korea and Sakura was being pressed about Azura and how she figured into their strategy and Sakura didn't know much about anything. Time flowed differently here, she thinks, but she's not sure and every day blinks into the next one suddenly and Sakura cannot remember sleeping. The sun burned her skin, burned her eyes and left afterimages everywhere and someone was asking her a question and she kept her head above water the best she could, left behind to deal with her siblings' mistakes again. 

*** 

Ryoma fell in love for the first time when he was 17, and it went so nowhere that to this day he can't remember who it was. Blasted out of his memory. 

*** 

The story of their family is a long and complicated one, a hidden one, and Hinoka doubts she has it in her to trace the precise line that led to her inception. And when she tries to remember stories of her family, things that would explain who she is or why they are the way they are, she cannot. Memory doesn't work that way, categorized into neat little file folders, and every time she tells a story about herself she forgets some critical detail and sinks further into herself. 

How they act: They do not know how to talk to each other. They did not know how to talk to their parents. They adore Mikoto. They also do not talk to her. They do not know a thing, or, rather, they know exactly what they think but not if they are allowed to think it. Their thoughts overwhelm, and the smallest of infractions is liable to send Mikoto into a cold rage and there is so much to learn and so little time. Takumi spends time in the woods and is cruel to Mikoto and Sakura tries to hold him back but spends too much time practicing her calligraphy, searching for a wabi-sabi imperfect perfection that she cannot find elsewhere, and Ryoma has never once shown emotion. Hinoka sharpens her naginata and loves her pegasi, even though once she fell off and broke her arm so bad the bone came out. She does not remember Aozora. She is afraid of Mikoto, of the woman that has told her once too often that she is selfish and cruel and needs to cooperate. 

Or maybe that is just her. 

No, it couldn't be. 

*** 

They are soldiers. They fight and they kill and they do not comprehend what they are doing and still they do it and their lives are filled with blood and barely-scabbed-over pain, and they are exactly what they are told to be. 

This is not a problem. 

* * *

 

Hinoka fully intended to carry her secret to her grave. That her mother was less than faithful was nobody's business. And besides - it hadn't mattered until the war started that bloodlines were kept pure and strong and true. When this war ended, things would go right back to not mattering.

So much hadn't mattered, until the war.

Hinoka shook her head and sighed. Now, the royal children had to be kept pure, trusted. To take lovers other than the king was to risk having children with unknown loyalties, to spread out blood until it meant absolutely nothing.

Hinoka thought that trying to ban two officials and only two officials from taking lovers was ludicrous - hell, even the action of making them forbidden made them that much more desirable. Having a ruler would be a power trip like no other.

And the secret - Hinoka only knew because her birth father would come and visit and give her gifts and vie for favor, even now. (She always, always, rebuked these. One father was enough. She was sick of General Suzuki.)

Everyone knew about Takumi, because Takumi had freaked out when the fire tribe envoy came into his room for the first time with gifts. Everyone knew. And, if he hadn't told everyone, they would have used his hair and his temper to link him to them, even though Hinoka personally knew that Takumi did both of those things deliberately. His natural hair was black, and his natural emotional response was stoicism, and he would spend hours each week carefully letting the bleach seep into the roots of his hair, not affecting anything around it, slowly marking him as something he was not.

Takumi found that he didn't need to listen to rumors if he carried around the Fujin Yumi enough. He may not have been legitimate to the court, but he was good enough for the gods, and he may not have had a shot at the throne, but Mikoto had seen it fit to give him leadership positions in the army, and no-one bothered to question it.

Hinoka did have a chance at the throne, and she was terrified of losing it, terrified of having it. Terrified of what would happen if Ryoma died in battle and Sakura had to rule. Sakura was too kind to rule. Too kind to lead. (And what would happen to her? Hinoka tried to deny it, sure, but she was just as selfish as anyone else. That was why she chased after Kamui - because Hinoka needed to be strong. Because of the glory that would come when Kamui was replaced. Of how absolutely no-one would think she was weak. Of how she would mean something. Of how she could do something, instead of just being the average middle child surrounded by exceptional siblings.)

So. Keeping her father a secret was of the utmost importance.

Which was why the death of her father shook her so much.

On his deathbed, General Suzuki revealed his secrets.

His wife pinned them down, at their breakfast (which was supposed to be a quiet place for siblings, a privilege carefully carved out by Ryoma), a widow blustered in a demanded to know who was her husband's child. Hinoka swallowed and opened her mouth and closed it and watched her entire world end.

There was a moment of silence.

The four looked at each other. Hinoka met each of their gazes - Takumi, with an almost imperceptible twinge of his normal anger. Ryoma, with sheer confusion.

Sakura.

Oh, god. Sakura.

"I am," Sakura said. "I'm his daughter."

The woman bit her tongue (everyone liked Sakura, and it felt cruel to kick a puppy) and left without saying another word.

Hinoka closed her eyes and counted to thirty. This would be all over Court in ten minutes. Hell, the twin rumor would probably come back, after this. Oh, god. She'd never be able to shake this off, not like Takumi.

"Sakura, why did you lie?"

Takumi. Probably convinced that there was a way to discredit Lady Suzuki. She was paranoid, he'd say. (Hinoka was afraid of Takumi, secretly. Never knew what to make of him. They both wore their emotions on their seleeve, but Takumi hid his motives so well Hinoka wasn't sure Takumi knew what he believed. Or maybe she was projecting.)

Anyway. He sounded angry enough, though at the situation or at Sakura or at Hinoka she couldn't tell. They might have known each other's secrets, but Takumi liked Sakura more. Everyone knew that.  
Sakura had closed her eyes, now, as if to bite back tears.

"Is it... don't tell me it's true, Hinoka." Ryoma seemed surprised, and was holding his chopsticks with a clenched fist that honestly scared her.

"I... Ryoma, I..."

Ryoma leaned back in his chair.

"The king was infertile," he said.

"No, he wasn't," Sakura said.

"Sakura - "

"I'm his. They got Orochi to check. I'm his."

"Then why-"

"Because Hinoka needs the power more than I do," she said. "And because she couldn't take the shame."

"I - "

"Hinoka, I'm not as weak as you are, and pretending that I am won't make you any stronger! I'm going to go see what hysterics Lady Suzuki is pulling in the foyer - Takumi, tell Hana that I've gone off to spar, when she asks."

She walked out.

Hinoka started crying.

Takumi turned on Ryoma. "So you're telling me - "

"I'm... the king's late brother's."

The three stared at each other.

To take down Ryoma would be to kill all of the royal siblings. Ryoma was trusted. Loved. To remove him from favor would tarnish their mother's name, and therefore all of her children. There was justification for everyone else being illegitimate - Sumeragi had started fighting more extensively after Ryoma was born, and they could all just mumble something about extensive combat injuries and the court would understand. And, besides - Ryoma looked exactly like Sumeragi, and everyone had hated Noriaki. To be linked with him was political suicide, and deception to boot.

This was calculated solidarity on his part. Hinoka wondered, for an instant, if she could trust him.

Takumi turned away, ashamed.

"We need to go," Ryoma said. "They'll want a statement on this."

"Let Mikoto make it!" Takumi said. "Let her pretend that everything's the goddamn same! Do you think Mikoto would make one of us tell the entire country that our mother was a slut-"

"Do not speak of your mother that way."

"It doesn't matter if that's what they think-"

"She loved you! Takumi, I'm appalled that you could *say* such a thing about her. You _adored_ her. Is this how you-"

"Ryoma, if you're upset, go cry to Mikoto! She always liked you best - go-"

"Don't finish that sentence."

Someone knocked at the door.

"Come in," Hinoka said.

It was Hana. "Hey - what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Takumi said. "Just... talking about our Sumeragi and Aozora."

"I... I'm sorry. Um, Sakura just told me as sec ago that we were going to go spar, and I was wondering if you guys had any spare practice katanas."

Meaning: everything is as it once was.

Hinoka said, "No, but tell Sakura that we'll be late for the press conference if we don't hurry."

Meaning: Don't you dare.

* * *

Hinoka would have been lying if she said she wasn't slightly furious that the heir apparent was just as illegitimate as Takumi. Ryoma had no right to it if Takumi didn't, and yet the way he acted was insufferable.  
Ryoma didn't like to play the game. He breathed honorability. He had become a symbol of honor, an example to follow. If Ryoma supported something, the rest of them had to, whether it was appeasing a noble or beginning to train an elite fighting force to look for Kamui.

Ryoma was a scared twenty-two-year-old out to do his best for his country and his siblings, in a situation where he could not afford to show fear. Who could blame him, for his lies? His follies? He was just as young as the rest of them, even if he had been forbidden to show it. And, with Takumi and Sakura nipping at his heels intellectually, and with Hinoka well capable of holding her own against him in battle, she had no doubts whatsoever that the stress on him would break any one of them.

None of them can remember the last time Ryoma showed emotion and wasn't punished. None of them denied that, even as Takumi vied for Ryoma's power, Ryoma prayed for his freedom. If their births had been switched, the ruler and the ambassador. But, now, they had grown twisted into their roles, a tree trimmed too vigorously, in too small a space, and didn't quite belong anywhere, too used to stress to tell when they were happy.

Until then: this.

Hinoka thrived on moral crusades, didn't have the faith to be anything less than certain, didn't have the time or mental chicanery required for debate. She protected herself through her convictions, through her protection. She is trusting to people she can be.

She hated herself, so she was kind to all. She wanted to hurt. She wanted to be hurt. She thirsted for praise that she did not deserve.  
Prove me wrong, she dared. Say you're my equal. Say you're better than me, Azama. We know it's true. I dare you. Give me what I deserve.

Azama refused to speak to her after Sakura was said to be a bastard. Hinoka liked to pretend to herself that it was because he didn't want to be permanently associated with a corrupt royalty, but she knew why. She knew.

And that was almost enough for her.

* * *

The kids said it was a ritual and Takumi believed them because of course he did and came home with singed hair and broken fingers and that was it for Sakura. Nothing else. She'd been through too much to put up with anything else anyone would try to do to make her someone she was not. Takumi was hers and anyone who thought otherwise could get bent for all she cared. 

***

A list of things Sakura is proud of: 

  * Pulling Takumi out of a meeting because he had to pull his arrows out of the cherry orchard 
  * Leaving her dinner because of her "first period" which was, in fact, the sauce from some Ojinga 
  * Pulling Takumi onto the roof of the castle and getting him to carve his name into one of the tiles 
  * Snuggling into Ryoma's lap during an Official Meeting and then Ryoma successfully negotiating a trade deal with the Chinese 
  * Setting Hinoka's (favorite) pegasus (best friend) free once it got pregnant 
  * Convincing Ryoma to excuse her from all future state dinners after she had that one panic attack



***

She wasn't anxious when she was alone. She was fine. She could do the most ridiculous and beautiful things if she wasn't afraid of not knowing anything not being good enough being cruel being someone else. 

* * *

 

Everyone knew that the Ice Tribe was filled with deviants. At one point, even, they had had two queens. Preposterous, was the Hoshidan consensus. Immoral. And where would the heirs come from?

The Ice Tribe heir apparent was a girl named Flora, who was currently on a long-term stay in the Nohrian castle as a student and diplomatic envoy but was, at this moment, visiting Hoshido with her father due to a border skirmish that needed to be resolved. Something about soldiers picking fights.

Flora was a year younger than Hinoka. Sixteen. And she had (hat Hoshidans saw as) characteristic Ice Tribe composure, prudence. Cold, but not unapproachable.

As the meetings dragged on, they ended up spending more and more time together, going for walks, sparring.  
Hinoka thought that Flora was charming and sweet and kind and beautiful-  
Hinoka ended up stammering something along the lines of "I have a crush on you" on Flora's last day, and Flora had kissed her and the entire world had temporarily been reduced to nothing but Flora and happiness and sunlight.

Hinoka also remembers her younger brother opening the door and Flora running out and Takumi just staring.

"Takumi, I-"

Takumi hugged her.

"I won't - I-"

"Takumi, what are you-"

"I won't tell them you're gay if you don't tell them that I am."

* * *

And so time passed and they trained and spoke to ambassadors and functionaries and cobbled together laws and went on long journeys to the countryside to bless crops and reign in prisoners and read and wrote and laughed and Sakura would play her koto as the four sat in their tents and tried to discover who they were without their masks. 

* * *

 

Ryoma does not know who he is, but he tries his best and even if it altogether not good it is still his best, which should not count for something but does, among those that matter. 

***

He is the king and is therefore God (or something close to it) and that rattles his bones. The structure of the court, with backstabbing and lies and the entire thing just a carnival of masks does nothing but worship this one divine truth, and Ryoma feels his center of balance sway and spin out of control. 

He hit Takumi in an argument once. Takumi was being a stupid kid with a bad attitude and he made a joke about how awful kimchi was and why were they even bothering with the Korean embassy when Korea was in flames and China was next and this was a waste of time and Ryoma knew he didn't mean it but Takumi was still on the floor, more bewildered than hurt as Ryoma picked him up and called over a healer and prayed that nothing would come of this. 

*** 

And then they grow up, and it feels sudden and the entirety of their pasts are put behind them in one swift motion, and emotions they did not know they had blossom before them like flowers in their hair. 

And with awareness leaves knowledge and anything that might help them grab onto their pasts slips away, and Ryoma knows that his relationship with his parents is fraught and tense and dangerous but cannot think of a single reason that it is, cannot think except for the year-long groundings and Mikoto telling him that he is unfit to be a king and knows that it is all his fault and knows that it is not. 

* * *

Sakura thinks that Ryoma is warmer, now. Kinder. Rajinto has molded to fit his shape and is no longer a sharp crackle but a warm buzz. 

Rajinto adores Ryoma. Takumi and the Fujin Yumi had a more strained relationship (and how many times has Takumi cut his fingers on the string?) and yet they are now almost a single organism, symbiotic and deadly, Takumi like a rabbit in the rain staring out at his prey, unsuited for power and yet completely accepting of it. 

* * *

 

Azura comes and the four do their best, but Takumi fucks it up right at the start by making a joke about her being a spy that some idiot noble took seriously and now Takumi can't take down the act without looking like he's lost an argument and nobody knows how to convince Azura to stop crying. 

* * *

Azama taught her how to breathe and she is grateful for that, even if she is still herself. To overspecialize is to invite an early death. Hinoka cannot cook but is not a shame. 

* * *

He's nervous. He's always nervous. Court politics put him on edge and he is tired of seeking attention, especially after he figured out that if he wants someone to pay attention to him he can just go to Sakura and bug her a little bit and she'll listen to whatever he has to say. 

They've never seen Takumi as legitimate and he's never cared about that but the fact that they love Ryoma drives him crazy. He knows he's better than what everyone thought was legitimate and is willing to prove it until he realizes that Ryoma is a symbol and a powerful one, not a person, the representative of a whole and thus nothing at all. 

There's been a group of nobles trying to put a series of elaborate measures in the tax code to hire more tax collectors that's (if you read the document) obvious tax evasion and Mikoto cannot anger them without them pulling their military support and Takumi is tired, tired of the everloving everlasting fireball his life has become. 

There is a quiet place inside him and he goes there and does not leave for a long time. 

* * *

Sakura does her best to not be mean to her siblings, but she knows that, if she put the effort in, she could have them locked in her grip in a week. She knows how to manipulate them without even trying. She finds that, on occasion, she knows what they're going to say. Takumi is the closest one to matching her and she can still run circles around him if she can reign her mind it, bring it to heel. 

Takumi does not compete with her, choosing instead to spend his time sprawled on her floor trading horrible haiku or bastardizing board games into abstract art apparatuses. 

There is nothing for her to be afraid of. She will be nothing but afraid for the entirety of her life and there is nothing to be afraid of and that is not fine but it is true. 

***

She never expected the war to escalate, and she puts on a new mask as Ryoma tells her the plan to kidnap Kamui back. It is preposterous. It is the worst idea she has ever heard and it is not her job to steer, and she prepares herself for whatever shall happen next. 

***

She visits Azura, occasionally. Azura's Hoshidan is bumpy but getting better, and Sakura begins to think that the crags in understanding exist not as artifacts of poor language skills but as artifacts of two scattered minds trying and failing to understand themselves well enough to help each other. 

They play Go every Tuesday. Azura is godawful but clever at making up fake rules, and the two end up spending long Wednesday morning hours drafting better games to play, knowing that they never will. 

* * *

She forces him to apologize. And he does. And Azura is thankful and something in her armor breaks, just a little, and they don't know what they just glimpsed but there is something, there, whole and not forgotten. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drinking game: every time I do something that's a stylistic choice but, like, obviously just a way to justify writing way less for this chapter take a shot and see if you die of alcohol poisoning! comment the results


	3. Takumi and Leo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember what i said about being done before june? i meant 2022

"Azura, do you  _know_ Kamui?" 

I can't do this. Not right now. Please. Didn't he hear me shower? Isn't that code enough for him to leave me alone? Or did he godforbid figure out that I only run the water as a diversion? At least my hair's wet. I can waste a good thirty seconds on that. 

Takumi's covering the door, watching as I step deliberately, slowly, out of my bathroom, dressed in my nightgown. Warping would be impolite, and I don't have any plans and he knows it. And I don't have any good dirt on him, either. So that's out. (I mean, besides the nightmares. But that's too shitty, even for me.) 

I start to open my drawers, looking for a towel. I don't keep my towels in my dresser drawers, but it gives me time to say something. Nothing. "No." Technically, not a lie. 

"Then why are you talking to her so much? Just out of curiosity." 

Right. Keep acting like you don't plan out your every move like some chessmaster. See how far I believe you. I love you, Takumi, but castles fuck people up. Krankenburg kills people. Shisaragi kills souls. 

"She's... interesting. I've never met someone quite like me in the ways she is. And she has news about the Nohrian siblings I left behind." I think about them and my face scrunches as a reflex. I walk into the bathroom and pull the towel off the door, letting it snap on the ground. Takumi watches me lazily. Let my hair fall down, wrap my towel into an unsteady spiral on my head. This takes twenty seconds. He doesn't look bored yet. 

"Really. That's all?" 

"Yes, Takumi. Leave me alone. I need to sleep." 

"Oh, you've got a couple minutes before your hair dries." 

God, what does he want from me? 

"Takumi, it's impolite to - " 

"Azura, I'm not buying your entire charade." 

"Fucking Hoshidans," I say, unsure of what I mean. He smiles, but I don't move. Have I told him about Valla? I think I got drunk around him once. I don't remember what I did, then. 

"She's my half-sibling. Biologically." 

He blinks. 

Well, I haven't told him that. 

"We share a father." 

"And so she's not related to us?" 

"I think she is, but only circuitously. Mikoto, if I remember correctly?" 

"... Does anyone else know?" 

"Probably Ryoma." Please leave me alone. 

"Who is your father?" 

Please, Takumi. 

"Some minor nobleman - " 

"Is this about Valla?" 

Oh God damn him. 

"No-" 

"So, yes. Are you two the princesses, there?" He tries to be nice but I can see the glee in his smile and the tap of his foot and I hate everything about living here. 

I stare at him. Maybe this will make him back down, back off, stop. 

"That's a yes, then." 

"What's wrong in my country is none of your business." 

Something about the way I say that makes him leave me, alone, looking out of my doorframe with towel hair and pajamas. As if he realized that I was telling the truth, that this was no longer an elaborate game, that we are adults with responsibilities and no longer whatever it was we used to be. 

***

We were prepared for leaving Valla. Everyone knew where Akanos was going. It was almost a rite of passage, for each ruler - they would face the Ancient Dragons, and some would fight back and some would be consumed, and, if they were consumed, the heirs would find heroes to do battle. There is a long and proud Vallan history of kidnapping Overlander strongarms to vanquish father figures. 

It was our birthright, our conquest. We wrote each other daily. When my mother died, Mikoto consoled me. When Krankenburg scarred me, I grew strong. I learned to sing, my voice becoming a holy sword through (my body fuel) I would survive. 

Kamui forgot everything about Valla. God knows how - and so I was left desperate, following a plan I thought harebrained, trying to make heroes out of strangers. When Garon was taken, it was almost a relief. An excuse to start something. 

Singers don't last long. Not now, not ever. Our magic destroys us, the blood of dragons congealed into something inhuman and incomprehensible. Once, on accident, I brought a dead sparrow back to life, and couldn't walk for the next week. So tired. 

And then there was Kamui. Her power was to wield the Yato, to channel the ancestors that gave her power over her countrymen, to become something distant and unaffected and impossibly strong. Kamui was never one to like dominating people. It didn't really surprise me, then, that she first summoned the sword when Mikoto died. Rage will do things to you. 

She shall only become stronger as she ages. As I wither away, she shall gather power, congealing, growing until she eventually faces an ancient dragon in the battle of wills. If we must, we shall send our children to kill her, as my mother sent us to kill Akanos. 

It's a cycle. See? 

The subtle changes don't matter. What's happened will happen.  

***

Takumi squirreled Ryoma into brokering a peace with the Nohrians, to Kamui's delight. Which meant that the confrontation with Xander mostly involved a terrified Ryoma trying to get Xander to listen to him and the other royal siblings being confused as to whether they were allowed to talk to each other, and Kamui trying not to be relieved that she didn't have to choose. 

Xander flatly refused until Camilla asked Ryoma if he could get Garon killed. 

I snapped my fingers. 

"Done," I said. 

***

The peace talks came immediately afterwards. Xander and Ryoma, arguing over what a peace would look like, with Camilla and Hinoka mostly gone to calm down the public and the youngest four doing their best to influence their oldest brothers and not be noticed. 

Battles were fought, side-by-side. Kamui lead. I watched. Helped. Sang. People followed us into Valla, into Hell, into death. The meaning of peace was stretched to include a mutually beneficial and endless state of war. Takumi and Leo would randomly ambush Kamui with strategy lessons that were both expert and mutually exclusive. 

She held on, bless her heart. 

This was going better than I hoped. 

* * *

So the thing about the Deeprealms is that people have kids and the thing about those kids is that they're always fucked in the head because they've spent their childhood in solitary confinement and I'm getting ahead of myself. 

I met Niles when he was about sixteen. He was two years older than me. We were... friends, as much as we could be. He taught me how to socialize with people, I think. (Castle Krankenburg is an interesting place that you should not ever visit.) 

No, more than that. He... he knew everything about me and everything about the castle and everything about the world outside, and you couldn't ever get him to change his mind. He was a solid rock at a time when everything was changing, when I couldn't trust my siblings or my parents to not do their best to screw me over. I have no doubt that I would have become someone much, much darker than I already am without him. 

Nina came out of her Deeprealm when she was about my age. She was... she frightened me, deeply. She was ebullient and charming in a way that I didn't realize was possible for Nohrians, and her casual manner scared me. Niles wouldn't listen to me when I tried to tell him how dangerously she was acting, how easily what she was doing would get her killed. He wanted her to be happy. 

I told him that she was either going to starve to death in Krankenburg or be a retainer, and that she'd get her head handed to her if she acted like that within a mile of the castle. 

And Niles tried to prove me wrong, because it was his job to prove to me that people are better than that. 

Nina did not have a fun time in Castle Krankenburg. She came home different. Apparently, they had caught her in an intimate position with one of the female staff members, and that was a "no" in Garon's book. 

Niles asked me to help. 

I was seventeen. 

And I'm so, so sorry. 

* * *

**C Support**

Where is Kamui? Oboro nearly  _died_ in the last battle. God, we need to have a talk. And after that, I'm going to hunt down Azura and make her tell us exactly what she can and cannot do. I  _saw_ her yesterday. Setsuna  _died._ I watched Azama fall to his knees and  _cry._ I  _saw_ it. 

Or maybe I'm overthinking things. It's what she'd call it, anyway. 

The spaces between battles are spent in her little Vallan pocket dimension. Kamui's castle. The terrain is unusual to me, a dreamlike combination of Nohrian, Hoshidan and Vallan that confuses me immensely. The walls are often literally physically impossible. Sakura made me a map, once, of just the ground floor, and the paper ran over itself, spirals of vellum showing displacement, almost cancerous in its twists and folds. Kamui promised us that it would never be difficult to find what we wanted. 

Well, Kamui, I want you. 

I turn the corner, fully expecting to see either another spiral staircase or a dead end with a window pointing at some absurd angle. Instead, I see Leo, surrounded by a small stack of bookshelves and some uncomfortable-looking Nohrian chairs that he wasn't sitting on. He was watching me, pretending to read even as we made eye contact. I blink, and the shelves move to be closer to him. 

He probably thought this would be private, bless his heart. 

"Oh god, it's you." Less annoyance with him and more exasperation at the castle. I want to see Kamui. I have no business with him. 

"What did I ever do to you?" I can't tell if he's angry or amused. His body language is guarded. He's looking through (see his eyes they're focused wrong) his book instead of watching me and they're perfectly still. Slow reader. 

"Technically, you showed up. I'm looking for - " 

"I'm just  _standing_ here! I was looking for some  _goddamned_ peace and quiet, and you come barging in, insisting that I'm being obnoxious?" 

Oh Jesus. 

"I'm sorry, your Highness. I'll-" 

"Don't call me that." 

I take a step back. "What?" 

"Your Highness. You don't mean it. Look - " 

"You realize that I, too, am a prince." Should I? I should. "God, you think you're so  _important!_ You're just seventeen, Leo." I think I'm still joking, but the rush of the conversation is getting to me. If this turns into an argument, I want to be ready. I haven't had a good fight in way too long. 

"Where I come from, that's  _adulthood_." He slams his book shut and kneels down to put it away. I think he's angry. He sounds angry. Has someone died close to him? No, I don't think so. Closest I can think of, Arthur was hit pretty hard, but Azura fixed him. 

Which I'm not going to think about, right now, because I don't want to. 

"Where you come from, people think it's fine to - " 

He looks at me. I stop short. 

We stare at each other for a few seconds. He seems angry, but I've seen Ryoma dothis before, act a way he's not to get a rise out of me. 

Of course, Leo's Nohrian. Maybe I've actually pissed him off, scared him, and now his angry demeanor is his way of shoving me off before he does something he regrets. 

I'm curious. I wait for him to speak. 

"I would recommend you not to say whatever foolish thing you appear to be mentally sounding out for the sake of your own reputation." He says this angry,  reshuffling books, now, removing and replacing them seemingly at random, with a loud _clack_ as each one hits the back of the bookshelf. 

"Let's pretend I don't care about my reputation." 

"Unlikely." Clack. 

"I have my reasons not to. Why should I care?" 

"Because we're too similar for any insult levied at me not to be rooted in self-loathing." 

There's a part of me that wants to punch him before I realize that he's sort of right, and then that part of me definitely wants to punch him. Maybe I did want to talk to him, to work out this nonsense of the parallel princes. But that won't work now, will it? 

"That doesn't make them not true." I walk closer and sit on a chair. It's as uncomfortable as it looks, but I have a better view of him. I watch his fingers, his hands, his movements, and pretend I'm not. I can't tell if he wants me to be here or not, whether deep inside him there's some un/conscious desire to see me grovel. I don't know enough about Nohrians, I realize. 

No, I just don't know enough about him. 

"Not every true thing needs to be said." 

"Are you trying to make me stop insulting you so you can pretend that you're perfect?" 

I'm grinning as he turns to look at me. He seems... rattled. 

I stop smiling. He stands up. He's a couple inches taller than me, normally. Now he looks like a giant, a slow and stormy anger building up in him and I pull my feet off the ground and put them on the seat, curled into a ball. 

I realize that I might have found him at a bad time, and start formulating reasons to leave. Is it someone's birthday? No. Do I have enough arrows? I don't need them. Can I reliably fake any of those things? 

Maybe? 

"Don't lower me to your level," he says, deathly calm. Some part of my brain flicks on, the part that knows about panic and arguments and toeing the line, the part of me that liked to spend days away from the castle, the part of me that lies. 

We look at each other. I can hear his breathing. 

"Why not?" 

Fuck. 

"My flaws are my business. I don't make a practice of trying to improve my enemies, and I don't believe that you would be so kind." 

"I don't think we're enemies." Not anymore. My voice sounds something small and echoing. 

He slams his hand on the bookshelf to my right. I jump and shriek, falling out of the chair and onto my ass. 

"If you really believe that the citizens of our countries shall accept a peace you are either a fool or pretending to be one. 

I scramble to my feet. 

"Maybe you're just xenophobic!" 

Nice one, Takumi! One of your greatest! Oh man you just walked into a bear pit and poked the bear and you're going to die now! 

"I... I want this to end well, and I don't think pretending that things are already going well is going to help me with that." 

He looks subdued. Tired. (Something in me relaxes before I realized I was shaking. I was shaking?

No. Focus.) 

He doesn't want to deal with this, I realize. Not me, and not the war, and the kindest thing I could do for him would be to extricate myself from the situation right now and give him an excuse to hate me. Maybe he needs this. Maybe I want this. 

I don't, of course, but if I can make his life a little bit easier, I'm all for it. 

"Solitary coward." 

He looks surprised, and then - is that a smile? 

No, don't look into it. You come from a country built on an obscene sense of self-consciousness. Awareness. 

He fires back. "Mindless toady." 

"Flashy upstart." 

"Insecure attention whore." 

A pause. He looks like he's getting ready to say something. I stand, relaxed. He looks calmer. Less threatening. Less like Xander. 

"I promise never to talk to you again if you promise never to talk to me."

He'll break this promise in under a day. 

"And stop talking to Kamui. You're confusing her."

"Excuse me?" I say. "You're the one confusing her."

"Deal's a deal," he says, and leaves the way I came.

There's another passage out, but I don't know where it goes.

I take a few breaths, look around. He was reading history books, mostly, and I grab a few off the shelf before walking off.

* * *

"Are you okay?" 

Takumi's never okay. I'm expecting a flavor of no. (This way, I have something to fix, something to do. Ryoma wouldn't let me fight, but I can heal, and I do my job well.) We're sitting in my room around a Go board on the floor. We're making patterns with the stones. We've done this since we were children. It used to piss off our dad, which is why we still do it. It reminds us of him. And it pisses off Ryoma. 

"No. Leo's been a bit _obnoxious_ with his training of Kamui, and I'm trying to think of what to do about it." 

He looks annoyed. I have no idea if he is or who he's mad at. Say what you will about his temper or his wit, but he's the best of all of us at Hoshidan politics, of ruthless lying and always watching, waiting for your opponent to destroy themself. 

"Is that all?" 

I see a flicker of a smile. He's exaggerating his annoyance. Or outright lying about Leo. Or hiding something. Or trying to make me think he's doing any of those things. 

"He's been going out of his way to show me up. He hid my hunting quiver, yesterday, and I got to beg him for it back in front of Ryoma." 

God, Takumi, just tell me what you mean. 

"... Really? And didn't you two agree not to talk to each other about ten years ago?" 

He blinks. 

"Yes!" 

Please, Takumi. I'm not Ryoma. I won't get mad at you if you don't make me puzzle out everything you say. I can't even begin to understand how the Nohrians must feel dealing with him. Kamui. Leo. 

His comment about the quiver could mean that he thinks Leo feels inferior, or is emasculating him, or has power over him, or is a wonderful teammate. 

Or a thousand other things, none of which I know or understand. 

You weren't like this before. 

Maybe he's doing this because _he_ doesn't know, either. 

"If you don't assume he's being mean to you, then he might end up seeming a lot nicer." Safest possible option, I figure. It probably applies to something, and he certainly needs to hear that, if he's anything like his brother. Or Hinoka. Or me. 

"I don't think he likes me."

"I can see that."

Shit. Did he hear that? Fuck.

"What? Why?"

Yes. he did.

"Leo told me that the only reason you talk to him is so you can be better than someone who's smarter than you."

He laughs, a little.

"I - what! That's..."

We look at each other. I realize none of us have touched the Go board in a few minutes. Our flower is lopsided, half its petals torn off.

"That's not why I talk to him," he says, making solid eye contact with me.

"Why do you, then?" I glance off, glance away.

He starts moving around the Go stones, making boxes of black and white squares.

I don't understand him. I don't understand him.

"I like him a lot."

"And?"

"And I'm bad at not making everything a deep important power play." 

I am suddenly filled with a deep and inconsolable terror: either my brother is willing to lie to me about whether or not he is lying and I can never trust a single word he says, or he is honest in that he does not know how to stop lying. 

And either way I have lost him. The hope I once had for him is gone, my fragile lifeline. 

He pauses, goes still for a second, doesn't look at me.

"Takumi... Seriously?"

He looks at me, there, angry. The same expression when he was about to tell me that he was a bastard with the Fire Tribe chieftain. That one. Yeah.

I steel myself.

It gets easier if you practice.

He says nothing.

I don't know if he means what I think he does. I'm going to guess that he does.

"Seriousy? Are you _insane_?"

"What about it? He's a perfectly competent person that I'd like to be friends with!"

I've never seen Takumi flustered like this, before. He's always in control, even at the expense of, well, anything.

"Oh, really." I want to back him into a corner, make him give me a straight answer, scare him into being unafraid, make him deal with a decade and a half of stone cold fear that I've nurtured to keep him alive.

"What!"

"Friends?"

"What are you implying?"

"I... nothing. Nothing!"

"Sakura."

"You're just perfectly fine at making friends normally. The only time I remember you having problems meeting someone was... Hinata."

He stops dead.

"What? I - you know about Hinata?"

No. That was a shot in the dark.

"Yes? You weren't subtle - "

He stands up.

"That - that _asshole_!"

I understand, suddenly, and just as suddenly hope I'm wrong. If what he thinks I said is true, Takumi is doomed.

And he told _Leo_ about it? Which makes them... partners in crime, maybe, or doomed to help each other. Or just doomed.

"What am I going to do?"

"Y-you'll figure it out. I'm s-sure you will."

He looks at me. "I hope you're right."

He walks out. Almost runs, really.

What did I just see?

I close my eyes and pray and hope I don't get an answer. The pieces are scattered on the floor. I pick them up, and Ryoma doesn't say anything when he passes.

***

"Ryoma!" 

He's sitting on his bed, scrawling something onto a notepad. There are at least a thousand bureaucratic hoops I need to jump through before I speak to him. I don't care. I can't be damned. Getting the attention of one of the Hoshidan heirs is an exhausting game of being big enough to notice and small enough to not scare, and these jumpy assholes can go and suck it. 

He recovers quickly, putting his notepad on his bed. Closed. "Yes, prince Leo?" He stands. He's taller than me, but not by much. 

"I want you to use small words and explain to me exactly why we're already heading into the Great Chasm when - " 

"Kamui." 

"I'm sorry, what?" 

"Azura had a... vision, of sorts, and we're going in now." 

I breathe. I can feel myself becoming angry. I don't want to hurt him. I just want him to know he's wrong, to stop a tragedy before it becomes real. 

Not like I can stop myself. A runaway train, they say. Don't prevent a Nohrian from getting what they want. 

"We can't, Ryoma. We lost Kaze, and he was one of our best warriors. And now Saizo and Kagero won't fight, and we need to replace all three of them if we don't want our campaign to be delightfully short." 

He doesn't say anything for about fifteen seconds, staring at the wall and sighing and trying to think of the perfect thing to say.

"Why do you only act professional in front of people that are of a lower status?"

"Because they're too dumb to listen otherwise," I say. "Why did you authorize this?"

"I didn't. You forget that Kamui and Azura are in charge." He says this mechanically, as if he's rehearsed it, as if he's said this to a thousand people. 

"You're joking."

"You forgot?"

I can feel my cheeks go red. Embarassment, probably. You *forgot*?

"Why? Who allowed this?

"Oh, dear Lord."

"Ryoma, if we do this, people are going to die! We're going to die!"

"And you don't want to die, I'm guessing?"

I pause for a second, to try and figure out if his question was actually serious.

"I - no? I'm seventeen! I don't want to die and I'm scared and this is suicide! And I don't want to pay for success with other people's lives! What are they thinking?"

"Does Takumi do this to Xander, too?"

If he won't respond to me, I'm going to at least make sure he knows what I'm mad about. I have nightmares about Arthur and this can't happen again and it's going to happen and I feel like someone is breaking my chest over and over and over and my heart is on fire. I'm drowning, and I can barely keep my head above water, and I can't do this. I want to sink and can't die. 

"And Kamui's not even that good of a general! What is wrong with her?" I'm crying. At least this wasn't around Takumi! 

"I'm sorry if I appear cold, but you don't appear to be interacting with me. And you're usually so calm and collected. This is rather amusing."

Oh, you bastard.

I keep going. Let him think I'm so angry I can't stop myself.

"And we haven't even taken stock of weapons yet! I heard from Sakura that we're running low on healing staves - what the hell is Kamui thinking, getting us into this mess?"

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes. You were saying?"

"Do you want my standard filial advice?"

If it's what made Takumi into a jumpy anxious... whatever he is, then no.

"Sure. Fuck it."

"Your country has a problem, and you are best-equipped to solve its problems. Fix them. Don't worry about things you can't control."

"Wow. So insightful." Did he just tell me to shut up and keep my head down?

I'm not going to stand for this. I'm not going to let these bastards break me.

I stare at him.

"Okay, then. None of us could have united our countries the way Kamui has, and none of us could pull off having Kamui as the figurehead and us as a mastermind, and morale is the only thing pulling us through Valla, and so we've decided to put Kamui in charge because if we don't the entire army is going to desert."

"That's complete - "

He looks at me.

I realize that he's just given me exactly what I wanted. Even if I already know it. I feel my face go bright red, again.

You will weather this storm, he is saying. Just like the rest of us.

"Do you do this to everyone." Not a question, and still I ask it.

"No, just you."

"I must look like an idiot."

"You look like a terrified teenager that's about to die. Go off and relax for the last minutes before we get called for the next fight."

"I - okay, then."

***

Niles confronted me after Garon found Nina and I just curled into a ball and took it. He shoved Odin in my face and he saved my life and I am sorry and take the wyverns or the food or the money or whatever you need to escape but there is no place left that I can call home and my mind feels like it's filtered through glass, crisp and clear and something missing. And I hold my breath and then he comes and gives me air and I let my mouth slip open and let hope slide in. 

* * *

**B Support**

"I think we need to talk." 

We're in the same alcove we ran into each other a week ago, and we have had exactly 112 conversations since then. Most of which were not negative, but talking to him while trying to avoid some harsh emotional trigger feels like trying not to step on a bug in a forest. And it looks like he's pissed off. 

I have no idea what he's doing but he looks like he's vibrating. He walks with a strange lack of focus, as if attempting to intimidate. It's so jarring it's almost effective. 

"Where did you come from?" 

"You walk around in body armor. It's not hard to find you. But what is your deal, even?" 

He's pissed off. Something's pissed him off and I suddenly realize that this is what he looks like when he's angry. 

God I think I hate him. 

"... You are very easily made to feel threatened." He's preparing for something, and I don't know what. 

"Really? If I recall correctly you told Sakura the only reason I talk to you is because I need someone to bully." 

"I didn't say that, but is that true?" 

"What was that for?" 

"What was what?" 

"When you..." He raises his eyebrows. 

"What, were you outed or something?" 

Something twitches. 

Oh god. 

"Enlighten me, Takumi." 

Eye contact. This game is fun. 

"You're doing it right now, jackass. Is this how Garon treated you? Or - " 

"I'd prefer a character assassination over an outing any day." 

"Why. Did. You. Out. Me." 

"Would you believe me if I said that I didn't?" 

"What?" 

"I didn't do whatever you think I did. Sakura is a nervous woman that lies to get you to do things. Please stop." 

"I'll stop if you stop making me look like a buffoon in front of my family." 

If I can get him to just shout at me I can keep the conversation corralled in a place where it cannot kill me. 

"Oh, you do that well enough yourself." 

"Really. Explain to me then why the first person you told - " 

"Please don't." 

"Oh, are you  _scared_ of me talking about- " 

"Don't! My siblings don't know! Asshole!"  

"... About you and Odin?" 

I shake my head. Childish mistakes, come back to haunt me. Nohr holds my secrets. Krankenburg shall keep my bones. 

"Wow, what a  _great_ time to start caring about privacy! After Sakura - " 

He cuts off suddenly. 

I am sitting on a chair in the corner of the Vallan castle and Takumi is standing in front of me. I close my eyes and pull him so he is sitting beside me and he does not resist, just stays still and his hand shakes in mind. 

I want to reach out and kiss him. I realize this. I want him to be mine, to be his, in a way that terrifies and thrills me. I want to reach out and touch him, tell him everything will be fine, that no-one shall find about what we have done, what we hope to do. I have seen him, watching me. 

We have not had a single conversation that does not involve us antagonizing each other and I am too scared to start now, don't know how to be sincere enough to tell him what I want. 

I open my eyes. He's staring at me. He wants to hate me. I can see it in his eyes, his posture. Me or him. 

Lying is a sin, but I'll give him what he wants, because that's what love is all about.

"Oh, what now? A sudden moment of introspection? Need to take a break? Can't find anything witty enough to protect you?" I sound like Xander. I disgust myself.

A few more seconds of silence. Maybe I've miscalculated. 

Then: "We're exactly the same, aren't we?" 

"I have no idea what you mean," I say, knowing that if I say that, he'll probably stop. Because the fact that we're the same is the entire point. I wonder what he looks like naked. My eyes flash shut and open again and I'm afraid for a moment that he can read minds. We are still holding hands. I move away, stand up, put my hands in my pockets, fidget, and don't know why. He stays still. 

He pauses before he speaks again and I want to collapse again. 

"God, we're both stuck in the same shitty situation, and we're making each other's lives hell because we're scared." 

No, not scared. 

I say that. 

"Then you're a fool." 

I walk out and I feel like every atom in my body is trying to vibrate out of place. But slowly. He's going to say something, shout after me, and I don't intend on listening. This is a handicap for not being Hoshidan, for not having practice in the subtle art of breaking someone's heart. 

"Leo," he says. 

"I'm sorry I went off on you." 

I hate myself for trusting him. I hate myself for putting myself in this situation. Takumi is an  _asshole_ that will lie to me to get me to say what he wants and I don't want to hear his apology. It might change my mind about him before I've made it up. 

* * *

"Are you okay? You've been acting very... strangely, ever since you and that Takumi boy started talking." 

I've got him cornered in a corner of mess hall. No-one's around. No-one likes to mess with me, I've found. I'm either a whore or a monster. Leo doesn't want to talk to me - he's looking around, pushing his food around on his plate, glancing at the exit. 

"It's not what you think," he says, in a voice he probably thinks is calm and unaffected. 

"And what do I think it is, hmm?" 

"Nothing!" 

So adorable. 

"You're so mean to boys you like." Leo gets incredibly defensive about anything vaguely related to his emotions, the poor thing. This will lighten the mood. 

"I - what the  _shit_ , Camilla! Fucking - " 

Whoops. 

Okay, time for some of my trademarked Camilla Nonsense. "Why don't you just try talking to him? I'll show you how - " 

"Camilla, you - "

No time to stop, now. Be calm and lovable, and you shall be loved. "I believe we both know that that Takumi boy has some sugar in his tank, dear, and that you can feel perfectly safe talking to him. Look at me. Why haven't you told Takumi how you feel?" 

Another long pause. I consider, briefly, whether I think any of my siblings still listen to me, or whether they think me to be the whore my mother was. Speaking like this is a bad habit that I can't break out of. 

"I can't." 

"Oh?" What a surprise. Looking after my siblings is such a fucking  _chore_ sometimes. 

I watch him stammer. We've gone through this exact scene, I remember. Right before he hooked up with Odin. 

I don't think he knows that I know about that. 

"I'd be admitting defeat." 

Well, at least he's slightly worried about his image. I look my brother over. He seems... worried. Extremely. As if someone used a blender on his internal organs, and now everything inside is just sloshing and bubbling. 

I'm filled with an almost dizzying sense of fear for him. This won't end well, I realize.

"Look, just... forget this ever happened. I'm sorry." 

This will ruin him. He's too idealistic to not let it do so. He's going to mumble something about romanticism and elope, and I'm not even sure that's a bad outcome for him. But... what if he doesn't say anything to Takumi? And what if Xander catches him? I can't protect him, then. Not from Xander. Xander wants to keep the crown and he'll do whatever it takes, and it's not that he doesn't love us, but that he doesn't know how. 

I don't know how to talk to him. 

My food's gone cold. I eat in silence, until Elise comes, and then bask in her glow. 

***

Takumi and I like to talk and drink in the garden. It started after Kamui was kidnapped, in a sort of emotionally-damaged sibling therapy, and slowly turned into just what we do on Saturdays, telling jokes, making stories. I'm vaguely tipsy. Takumi's sober, but exhausted, which amounts to basically the same thing. The sun is setting into a bright, thick orange, and we're watching it on a bench facing and endless chasm, feeling our corneas mount a resistance (to the sun/the light/ the insanity), and we almost care. He's let his hair down, and the wind is blowing it so that all the tiny bits of short hair collapse into one large and flowing mass that will probably end up in my face. 

This is the only way we talk. 

"What do you want to do when the war is over?" he says. He sounds unrestrained, energized, and I know if I was more aware I'd be able to get him to tell me whatever I wanted. 

"Go somewhere far away and have children and never talk to anyone else again," I say.

He laughs. With me, at me, I don't care. The difference, I've found, fades in time. "No, really."

"Marry someone from a country where women don't have political responsibility and wander off."

"That's... surprisingly candid. Have a plan for when someone eavesdrops? I haven't gotten a chance to - "

"I got Sakura to soundproof the garden. Ryoma doesn't know."

"Nice." I actually have no idea if the garden is soundproofed, but it seems like something Sakura would do.

"Yeah," I say.

We look into the sun for a little while longer. A few of the starts start to shine, in a pattern I'm not convinced is normal. I remember hearing that this was a pocket dimension, an alternate world, Valla.

I don't care, not really. I take a drink.

"So you really don't want anything to do with politics?" he says.

"I've spent my entire life fighting this goddamn war that I didn't start and don't want. I think I've done enough for my country." I pass him the bottle, and he takes a long, slow swig.

He exhales, then.

"That sounds nice."

We don't say anything else for the rest of the night.

***

I pin down Xander before our next battle, when Kamui is choosing soldiers and weapons and strategies. He's in the armory, taking care of Siegfried. "We need to do something about Azura," I say. Blunt. Careless in a calculated way.

"Really? Why?"

Nohrian strength, I've found, lies in honesty; they shall tell you what they will do and then do it and you shall be powerless to stop them. Talking to Xander feels like having the rug pulled from under you, as if the world has given up teaching you how to live it. Something I aspire to, now that I've seen it. 

"This is her war, and she's making us fight it."

He doesn't say anything. He polishes his sword, then pulls it up, looks at the way it reflects our faces. I watch. If he wanted to, he could kill me, before I have time to grab Rajinto. 

I shake the thought away.

"Is this about Kaze?"

I don't say anything. I try not to think. I nod.

***

Kamui paired me up with Leo for the battle. Something about having me stuck with a tank, or something, and Leo's defied orders and gone off to explore something in the brush. I hear a noise and draw my bow and flinch. Nothing happens. He stares at me, not sure whether he's supposed to feel awkward or protective. 

Fuck that. Fuck him, anyway. Fuck him and his cute - 

"Why are we here, exactly?" 

"I thought I saw something. Our army could use all the gold we can find." 

Right. It ended up that the reason we were low on healing staves was because we were low on funds, which is why me being around someone who can protect me is now important. Still. "Don't tell me you actually thought that there would be gold here. And what if we run into some cave monster? Don't dragons and shit grow here?" 

He pulls aside a bush, and then I see it. 

"Oh, look! A small pile of gold!" he says. 

"What? That's almost 700 coins! How did you - "

"Practice." He seems proud.

"That's... really impressive." He's called over the convoy, and Flora zaps the coins into the back.

"Wow. A compliment from you!" He's smiling. He has a beautiful smile.

"Given the circumstances. I mean, it's probably the hoard of some beast that's going to eat us. But good job. This'll help us a lot." I have to protect my reputation, after all. And now he's laughing along. If I don't think too hard, this is perfect. 

"Not as impressive as you and your goddamned +7 Flaming Raging Poisonous Doomed Magical Bow of Infinite Destruction." 

"I'm sure you're very talented with your magic, too," I say, because it sounds like the sort of thing you'd say when you don't want to think about the good time you're having. 

He changes immediately. "Don't give me that 'try harder and you'll be just what everyone wants' bullshit. I've been trying hard my entire life, and I can't even be a strong mage." 

And just when I thought we were having a pleasant conversation! 

"... You  _are_ a strong mage." The best I know, actually. 

"Have you met Nyx." 

There are many different definitions of strength, Leo. "She's about two hundred years old, isn't she?" 

"Nobody in Nohr cares. I'm the prince that's outperformed by some rando commoner." 

We pause, for a moment. Leo gets back on his horse, and we start making our way to the choke point we were told to defend. 

"I... I know how you feel." He's probably been told about my colorful heritage and nightmares and nonsense. I want to feel embarrassed. Embarrassment is better than powerlessness, than this limbo. 

"... Yeah."

Please, please talk to me, I think. Please. I don't know what to do with your silence.

"Niles found out," he says.

Oh my god.

"Oh my god. I - Odin or - "

"Oh, he knew about Odin. He found out about Hinata, too. I don't know what he's going to do. I don't think he's told Nina yet, so I've got a little time. He doesn't really have a reason to fuck over your life, so he's probably just going to guilt trip me into... something."

It's out of my mouth before I can think it through. I want to help him, to reassure him, to give him a way out. "I mean, I'm sure that you could do the great things you obsess about if you were just a little more willing to go onto the battlefield. I mean, we're foraging. You could probably dispel some doubts with some act of bravery - "

"You want me to be brave?" he says, and my blood runs cold. "All right then. I'll show you _bravery_." He dashes off, forward, away, and I can seem him diving straight into the center of the battle faster than I could hope to catch up.

"Wait!"

He's not listening to me. I hear someone else shouting, too. Camilla? Azura?

"I'm sorry!"

I see him fall, then, and he gets back up and keeps fighting. He pulls out a sword, now, and zaps someone, and five more take his place.

"Leo?"

I start running towards him. I hear Hinoka swooping in behind me.

He falls off his horse again, and doesn't get back up.

"Leo!"

***

Someone is going to save me. It's protocol. Kamui told us, explicitly, that avoiding the deaths of the royal siblings was Priority Number One. If I can stay conscious, I will stay alive. I start to count to a hundred. At twenty, my arms give out, and I collapse again. The enemies are starting to leave me alone, but a few circle what is soon to be my corpse. Breathing hurts. Thinking hurts. I want to die. There is a part of me that's terrified, that wants to hold on to my life as hard as possible, and there's another louder part of me that hated it all and hates it even more now. 

It would be... fitting, if I died here.

Rather nice. It'd shut up Niles, that's for sure. My horse has run off. I don't know where he is. Safe, maybe? Maybe he'll wander into someone's stable and live a peaceful life without me. That would be nice.

Why can't I die here? Why do I have to keep doing this? Why do I have to encure something I despise? So I can keep on doing it?

That's what Camilla would say, probably. "Survival is your reward."

Well, fuck you, Camilla.

I don't want to be strong. I want to be happy, and kind. I pull myself into the fetal position. I think I hear someone coming. A pegasus? A wyvern? I run through the names. Tsubaki-Beruka-Reina? None of them came on this battle.

My thoughts and vision start to blur, float. I hear shouting. Why am I in this mess, again?

I remember, sort of. Takumi goaded me on.

Well, not really. That was more of my fault. If I get to see him again, I'll tell him.

I close my eyes.

***

"Is he going to be okay?"

"Lady Elise-"

"Azama, I don't have time for your bullshit."

"He's not going to die right now."

"... Good."

* * *

**A Support**

"So you've come to visit me in my misery? Do make it short. My life is pathetic enough without you in it."

"I'm sorry."

"... Pardon me?" Like he didn't expect me to be here, or say what I said. Or both. Or neither. I try not to look at him. His Witches' Mark is glowing a bright and roiling red.

"I'm sorry, okay! I just... shouldn't have treated you like shit."

I do not cry.

He looks at me. He looks like shit. I feel like shit.

"... If you don't accept my apology, I understand. I've... fucked up bad."

"... I miss when you were just mean. It was easier to hate you, then."

"I mean, it wouldn't be very hard for you to still hate me, given that it's my fault that you're..."

"Crippled?"

"I wasn't going to say that." Please don't think of yourself in that way. I couldn't bear it.

"Might as well have. Look.."

A long pause, here. He looks out of his window. Twiddles his thumbs.

"I'm sorry."

"For what? I'm the one that got you... like this."

"For being an arrogant jackass. And I'll stop."

I push my fingernails into my palms until I feel blood.

"Everything just seems more... petty, now."

Please stop. I can't bear this. I can't bear watching you. 

"Hey. If you have some free time, I have some books on Hoshidan history, if you want to borrow them," I say. I don't want to see him hurt. I want to leave and not look back. I want to hover by his side. I want answers. I want to forget. Now Leo has gone from a soldier, battling something terrible and great, to a casualty, someone who has failed, and I think I am afraid that his weakness is contagious. 

Brynhildir sits on the side of his bed. There's a layer of blood on the pages. I doubt it's readable. The Fujin Yumi glows. 

"I... thanks."

I turn to leave. I put the books in my room, which I don't know how to get to from here. I could concievably waste hours with my thoughts. A drop of my blood drips onto my boot.

"Takumi?"

I turn back around, hoping Leo won't notice. His eyes flicker over me.

"Yes?"

"What's the news with Niles?"

Please.

"Everyone knows, except for Xander and Ryoma."

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back and breathes, deeply, in and out.

"Well, it could be worse," he says.

"I mean, the secret hasn't left the army yet, so you do have time if you want to run away."

"You think I can run away in this condition?"

"They found your horse. I could guide you out. I know the terrain." Aaaand another round of 'Takumi gives Leo stupid-ass advice' draws to a close!

"I could never ask you to do that."

"I..."

"I feel responsible."

"You aren't. Don't act like you are."

I turn my face to the side so he can't see me crying.

Please don't die, Leo. I don't know if I could take it.

"If you need help, I'll do what I can," I say.

"It won't be enough."

What's going to happen to us? Xander's going to find out any goddamned minute. Any minute, and then...

"I'll go get your books."

"Thank you. I... for... for offering."

I look at him, then turn away.

* * *

I see my brother across the room and almost run up to him. We haven't spoken in too long. 

And I don't want to think about what I'll have to do. He's holding a stack of books under his arms, the sort you could bash out someone's brains with. "Takumi! Hi! We haven't had a chance to talk much since -" 

"Why the  _hell_ are you in charge of strategy?" 

"Pardon?" 

"You heard me. Why are you in charge?" 

"... This is about Leo." Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. He blames me for that. He hasn't listened to a word I've said, and we've been down our best archer, and... and this is too much for me and I can never let him know. 

"Of course it is! If you weren't so incompetent - "

"Leo did that of his own volition! I couldn't stop him!"

"Oh, really? You couldn't protect him?"

"Takumi, you're not speaking reason. Please - we're all so, so scared for him - "

"I don't care. End this war as soon as you can."

***

"Xander, you know it's time for me to fight. I know the news about Felicia."

Elise has taken to following me around the castle whenever she can. I want to sleep. She's standing in front of my bathroom, refusing to let me shower. "I refuse to let you onto the battlefield," I say. She's not listening. She never listens.

"Xander, Kamui needs another healer, and Nyx is too useful as a mage and Hayato doesn't know how to use a heal stave."

"You are too precious to the -"

"Xander, I know that you told Garon that I died in the war." And now he's dead and I wonder who did that. 

"Who told you that?" I say. Do I sound calm? If I sound calm, maybe I can convince her that I didn't.

"Camilla. She said I was old enough to know some things. How you protected me."

She did what?

"And you know what, Xander? I'm sick of being coddled." She's pulling herself to as tall as possible, standing on tiptoe, and she still doesn't even come up to my chest. She's angry. She's so, so angry.

"You have no idea what we went though," I say.

"You have no idea what it's like to feel so _guilty_."

"I forbid you to leave your chambers until the war is done."

"I'll undo any lock."

"I'll leave behind Peri, then." Should've done this with Leo, too. Should've done this with the entire army, and told Azura to just take me. Let my body be torn limb from limb.

I don't want to do what I'm going to have to do to Leo. But I'm going to do it. Because it'll save our family and our country and I am so, so sorry. 

"Xander!"

"Don't test me, Elise."

"Xander, you can't try to save me when there's good I can do - "

"Elise, I need you to be safe.  _I_ need you."

She looks askance, vision shuffling around. I've scared her, now.

"Why?"

Because I'm weak, I think. Because I love you. Because of Leo, and because that can never, ever happen again.

I hug her and don't let her go.

* * *

**A+ Support**

"Feeling any better? I brought you a bowl of Miso, if you'd like it." 

"That would be great. Thank you." I have no intention of eating it. I threw up my last... seven or so meals? Or something. No point. Still. He doesn't have to know that. And it looks rather nice on my bedside table. Goes with the furniture. 

That same feeling of panic, that 'your life is something precious and you must hold onto it at all costs' is still there, but muted, more of a constant friction than my current focus. 

He pauses. He's expecting me to tell him something. This is how we've functioned, for a while - he helps me, and I help him. 

"I'm not doing any better. Apparently, my magic is reacting poorly with the medicine. My Witches' Mark was damaged, or something. They're not sure how much longer I'm going to make it." 

He tries not to look shocked. I'm grateful. 

"They're probably going to cut it out. It'll bump up my chance of survival." I touch it, almost reflexively, and it's so hot I have to pull my fingers away. I can only imagine what Takumi is trying to avoid staring at. 

He does a little worse at not looking frightened. I try to ignore him. 

"But I'll be sure to survive, then," I finish. "And have less work to do! So that's - " 

"You - you can't." He looks indignant, afraid. Like he always does, really. 

I think I'm in love. 

"Why not?" 

"You wouldn't be - "

"Don't say 'yourself anymore.'"

I look him in the eyes. He breaks eye contact first.

A long pause.

"Useful," he says.

"That was worse, but a fair point."

Please leave, Takumi. You've tried so, so hard.

"Look - I'm trying to find something good out of this situation. Takumi, I don't like fighting! This'll give me new... opportunities."

"Sorry."

"...It's fine. You didn't mean to hurt me."

I don't know if I mean it. The atmosphere is turning thick and heavy, like a soft white blanket, warm and suffocating and blinding and dark.

"When is your... your operation?"

It's tomorrow.

"I don't know."

"Well...Good... good luck."

"Thanks. So... do you have any more books you could lend me?"

He nods, but hesitates. "Actually, I was wondering if you could show me how to play... Chess? Camilla told me that you were looking for someone to play with. It can't be too different from shogi, so - "

"I - um, what?"

"What?" Almost defensive. He's standing, but close to the door, trying to make himself seem as small as possible. Courting the exit. Like a deer, almost.

"I'm surprised that-"

He cuts me off. "That I'm not either doing the bare minimum or being outright abusive?" He says it with a grin, almost.

"Something like that. Um, my chessboard is in my room, on top of my closet."

Talking to him is hard and I think he's trying and I am nothing but a puff of gray air holding up a suit of armor. 

"I'll go get it."

"I figured."

He pulls something out of his pocket - a map? Probably - it's not flat. There's one corkscrew that goes up for half an inch.

"Takumi?" I say.

"I - yes?"

"Thank you."

And I mean it.

Another pause. He's not reading his map. I am filled with a paralyzing fear that he's taken what I've said the wrong way, that I seem predatory. Vicious.

Then: "You've gotten sweet, after..." He searches for a word, then gives up. "This." He gestures vaguely.

Another pause.

"Xander knows," I say.

I look away. I'm embarrassed, I think. I'm not sure why. He's not who I'm afraid of.

"What did he do?"

"Nothing, yet. I think he's pretending that nothing's happened."

"I - sorry."

"Is... everything okay, on your front? With Hinata?"

"Ryoma is... quiet. He might just be nervous. About the next fight. I hope."

"We can hope."

Look at us, lying to each other, after the lies we used to keep ourselves safe (our most treasured weapons) have failed us! Watch us hone our safety valves by slamming each other!

I still don't look at him. I don't want to know what I'd see. What he'd see. What I'd do. Our conversations are turning into this, I realize. Long pauses and wanting blindness. A desire for the static.

"I'll go grab a chair and the chessboard, then!"

"Right!" I say.

But he's gone.

* * *

"So! How are we doing?" I want to throw up. To bury my face in Azura's hair. To find a noose and bring it around my neck like a crown, like an inheritance, and let my fire die out. Last time I tried, a brick in the ceiling fell out. This time, I'm ready. My castle is large and treacherous. They shall not find me. I shall wait. 

"Well, we're pretty close to the heart of Valla, now. If my map's correct, we should be about a fortnight from the capital." She points at it - it's this big, table-sized thing she keeps in her room, and she has to stand to reach the center, where we are. We need to fight our way out to the edges, she says, and I believe her. 

"Really? That close?"

"Yes. Which means that we need to discuss who we're bringing with us - "

"Is this about Takumi and Leo?"

I'm not paying attention. I'm watching the way she moves, how every single action seems to make a circle, from the way she points at things to the way she walks around a room to the way she looks at me. Whole, maybe.

I heard about Leo, this morning. They had to tear off his Witches' Mark. The screams echoed throughout the castle. My reality is small, I have found. Physically. Mentally, it is large and sprawling, big enough to die in.

"No?"

Then: "What happened?"

"I - you haven't heard?" What a surprise. Where was she?

"Oh no."

"I..."

"I believe that a rather spectacular fall from grace is imminent for the both of them." If she hasn't heard about what Ryoma said, she doesn't need to.

"Who did they kill?"

"What? No!"

"... Then what did they _do_?"

"Azura, you really haven't heard?"

"I do not make a point of listening to army gossip."

Oh.

Wonderful.

Do _I_ really have the authority to explain this to her? Because I don't want that authority. I don't want to be in charge of the army. I don't want to be in charge of what happens to those two.

Hell, I don't want _power_. I've seen enough of war. I want to just find a home in the middle of nowhere and bake cookies for a living and get old and fat and kind and forget any of this ever happened.

"They're both gay," I say.

She looks at me like I'm an idiot.

"Remember that my cultural knowledge consists of Valla only, and remind me why this matters."

"I - Nohr and Hoshido are super homophobic?"

And she didn't know!

"I - oh, shit."

"Why, exactly, did you think I didn't want anyone to know about us?"

"Because you were shy, or something. Or the incest."

I watch her cycle through the fifty or conclusions that follow that. Look! That eyebrow-raise is "why we fired Hinata"!

"I was thinking about staying behind to rule Valla after the war was over," she finally says.

"I..."

I don't want this.

I don't want her. I don't know who she is, who this woman is that stole my heart, and I want it back. I have heard her stories, heard of how her country has fallen apart.

I don't want to say yes.

But I do. I do. I don't resist.

***

I pin down Takumi when he's leaving to train. Early morning. He takes a long walk around the garden before he trains, if Hinoka's to be trusted. Which she is. "Hello, Takumi!" I shout at him.

"What the - I mean, hello, Lady Camilla." He sounds pissed.

"Are all of you really that jumpy?"

"The last time someone tapped Ryoma on the shoulder, the castle incurred two thousand dollars in property damage."

"I... wow. He acts so calm - "

"He's... obsessed with what other people think of him. So, what brings you here?"

"Just wanted to say hello," I say, and give him my most charming smile.

"... Really."

"Why? Is that not -"

"If you're anything like Leo, you have about five different reasons that you're here, and you haven't told me what they are which is fine except you're not the sort to subtly imply something about how much of a dolt I am through your body language like any self-respecting Hoshidan. I'm fucking stuck. Why are you here?"

"You're comparing me to my brother? How sweet!"

"I - as a sibling, yes." He sounds exasperated. I don't care. I really, really don't care.

"How else would you compare us?" I say, just to piss him off.

"I - that came out wrong. Please let me go. I'm late."

"For what?"

"For none-of-your-business, that's what."

So he's not going for training? The kid that overexerts himself constantly? Right.

"Look, we all know that you and Leo spend most of your free time together. Nobody-"

"Well, I'm _sorry_ that - "

"Look at me, Takumi."

He stops. Turns to face me. I'm taller than him, but not by much.

"Whatever you do, please take care of yourself and Leo. I... I understand that you are in a dangerous position, but I care about my brother, and, by extension, everyone he cares about, too much to tolerate any terrible thing that may befall you."

There's a solid five seconds of dead silence before he says, "I - what?"

"Don't play coy, Takumi."

"I wasn't planning on saying anything."

Oh, for fuck's sake. Nobody's going to tell me what I want to hear unless I bash it out of them myself. "Takumi, please consider that my brother is obviously in love with you - "

"I'm sorry, what?"

"He can't tolerate seeing people for more than about three hours a day, and you're always in his room. He likes you. Trust me. The only other person he did that with was - "

"Odin," he says, with an implicit _oh motherfucking shit_.

He looks away, over the ledge of the island. My mother would do this, sneak me home and let me look over ledges. _L'appel du vide_ , she would say, and call me Chlo _é_ and tell me she loved me. I get the urge to jump, to shove him off.

"Ah, the beauty of nonexistent nonreciprocated love," I say instead. "Look, Takumi. If you tell Leo how you feel, you'll... You'll at least make him happy."

"Or freak him out."

Is that all he thinks about? So easily scared - is that how he defines people? This is Leo, and he is afraid of emotional closeness. This is me, and I am afraid of being hurt. Or, no. Maybe he defines Hoshians as afraid of not being heard for who they are, and defines Nohrians as being afraid of not getting what they want. Or maybe he defines humanity as a fear of not being special, anymore, of becoming a heavenless animal, no longer the crown jewel of God's creations.

"... He's mellowed out, quite a bit, after..."

"Everything."

"Yes."

"Thank you, Princess. I shall -

"And, Takumi? If you ever need anything, such as training for riding wyverns, or extra supplies, I shall be glad to assist you."

He gives me a strange look. I give him ten seconds to figure out what I mean.

"...You're not saying - "

He gets it. I love Hoshidans.

"I am not saying anything. I just want you to know that I shall support you in any way I can."

"I can't leave Hoshido - "

"There's a difference between abandoning and fleeing."

The understanding that I am helping my brother run away hits me, full force. Saudade. Hiraeth. Summers with my mother, shared with him, and I refuse to cry in front of someone I should protect.

"I have responsibilities-"

"And others are more equipped to do them. You were not made for the job you have been forced to do. Remember this."

He doesn't believe me. I want this idiot boy to be happy, and he won't listen to me.

"Please don't try to pretend that this will end well for you."

"I..." He's trying not to cry, clenching his fists.

I hug him. He's tense for a couple seconds, then relaxes. Gives up. Gives in. Starts sobbing, and realize that I well and truly do not want him to hurt more than anything else, right now.

"I've spent so goddamn long trying to be good enough, and then... this goddamn happens."

"... I don't want you to be strong, Takumi. I want you to be kind. Make Leo happy, for me."

"Shit. If Ryoma catches me crying - "

I let go. Look at him, dead in his crying eyes.

"I shall personally pound the shit out of him before he does anything else to you. Relax. You're going to be fine."

"No, I'm not."

"No, you're not. But you're going to be fine enough."

"...Thank you."

***

I find him in his room, trying to walk, despite Azama's direct orders not to let him out of bed for any reason. He's using his desk (across the room) as a support I'm not convinced he needs, looking over a chessboard where black has thoroughly trounced white. Two chairs are pulled up to it.

"Leo," I say.  
"I - why are _you_ here?"

"To help. I'm going to need your strategic advice for our next battle, which should help improve your standing. Afterwards, I'm going to see what I can do to convince Ryoma and Xander to... stop. I've told most of the army and your siblings to calm down. Trust me. Please."

He crosses his arms, slowly, as if remembering how to move without his magic. Closes his eyes.

"Azura, if you fail to deliver on your promise, I do not know if I shall be able to trust you again."

"That wasn't a promise."

"Then what was it?"

"I can't guarantee that I can change anything -"

"Then why are you speaking to me?"

I clench my fists and count to ten and feel him watching me.

"Look, Azura. Promises mean nothing unless the outcome is uncertain. I know that you intend to go to Valla after Xander and Ryoma are crowned. I know that you intend to take Kamui with you. I know that you and Kamui are an item. I know that Valla isn't homophobic. And I know that it's impossible to survive Valla without Vallan blood or intense magic. You're going to leave, and no-one who could hurt you will be able to follow you. And you won't ever have to think about this train wreck of a country you had to live in for a few years, or all the fuckup siblings that you stayed with. You have no reason to invest anything into us. It is safest, for you, if you do not associate with us. I do not trust you. I do not know what is wrong with Akanos, but I have a feeling that you could just force Jakob to do whatever you wanted and it would work out fine for you."

"You sound like Takumi," I say, because there's nothing else to say. He doesn't understand. My people are dying, and I must save them, and the destruction of my country is worth a few deaths.

"Maybe he's rubbed off on me," he says, and he's not smiling.

"You love him."

"Maybe. That's irrelevant. We're talking about you."

"Are we, really?"

"Azura, if you're not going to give me anything concrete, you can leave. I believe we both are getting tired of your little charade. Your chosen way of making yourself useful, is it? Promising help?"

"One day, you're going to refuse the wrong person's help."

"One day, someone's going to catch on to you before you know what you're doing and get what you want."

I could punch him. Right now. Take him down and say he fell, and I wouldn't have to listen to him threaten my country, my family.

"All you Nohrians are the same."

"I do hope not all Vallans are like you."

"Send Takumi my regards." I turn to leave.

"So you're not staying for tea? Or do you just not want to hear what he'll say to you?"

"... I can understand why you would be disowned by your own brother." I don't regret it. It feels good. I don't care about these people, about everyone that's shoved me away for my entire life, treated me like an outsider, a freak. I want to go home. I watched my family die, and they don't care. Damn them.

"If you think my sharp tongue is why he now hates me, you have not met my brother. You have met the mask my brother wears when he wants to appear likeable and in control. I _learned_ from him."

"I do hope that Takumi knows that you're so vile."

"I'm not vile. I just say what I see."

I stand in the doorframe and close my eyes. I have seen this person kill his sibling so he could have a shot at Brynhildir. He may have forgotten. I do not. I can not.

"If this is how you see the world, then I..."

I turn back to look at him. He's staring me down.

I see the patch on his neck where they tore out his Mark, a giant square of scar and scab.

"...Am very, very sorry."

"Please leave."

"Thank you for your hospitality."

"You never accepted it before you wanted to look friendly."

I look at him to spite him. He's bigger than me, but he knows I could take him in a fight. Now. I was never strong.

"I thought you would like to feel justified in leaving now. I know you never intended to stay here. We would have loved you, if you had. We were in Krankenburg for the long haul, and that... changes you."

If this bastard thinks I care about his romanticized daddy issues, he can go and fuck himself.

"Please know that you were loved. That we all loved you."

"I hate you."

I rush out, turn a corner, start to cry, and hate myself for it.

I can still hear Leo, it turns out.

"I'll miss you, too," he says, and I start sobbing so hard I can't breathe.

* * *

**S Support**

"You're looking a lot better." I'm so nervous I want to throw up. I focus on him. I'm not lying. He's moving with more energy than I think I've ever seen him with. He's wearing a scarf, too, to cover where his Mark was. It looks good on him. 

 "There was this PR thing I was going to go to before Camilla intervened, so I got a double dose of healing. It was extremely unpleasant." We turn the corner. The castle is huge, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it - it only took me ten minutes to find the exit, this time. We head outside. It's just before sunset. 

"Can you take a compliment, for once?"

"No, actually. It's a serious psychiatric condition, and I'm currently undergoing long-term therapy for it."

I stop and stare at him. He goes on, for a little bit, then stops and turns to me and smiles.

"Was that a joke? I couldn't tell."

"Yes. Yes, it was."

I blink, then shake my head and keep going.

"I'm sorry."

"You have a very interesting sense of humor."

"Thanks. Hey - could you help me down? These stairs are steep."

"Sure."

"I fell down these, yesterday. No fun."

I help him up, his hand on my shoulder. We move slowly.

"I won't be able to fight again."

"Sure you will," I say, because I'm supposed to. Not because I necessarily believe it.

"Not in this war. I didn't even realize how much I relied on magic until I had none left. But... I'll get better. Who knows? Maybe I'll be a great swordsman - "

"Don't," I say. Please.

He looks at me, expectantly.

He wants to fight.

He's guilty, I realize. He's so guilty he doesn't even realize it. 

"I... you've been hurt enough," I say, and keep going. He struggles to keep up until I slow down, and we stand close. Uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. The courtyard lights up for me, the path we need to take the only thing left on my mind.

"Men far better than I have suffered worse."

"You're seventeen, Leo. You don't deserve this."

"Thank you. Wait - don't you turn left to get to the records hall?"

"We're not going to the records hall." We've spent hours this week in there - it's surprising what they keep. Marriage records and financial records, yes, but also letters, trinkets, spells.

"Where are we going?"

"I found this quiet place where we can talk. On the guard wall. Nobody goes there, because it's right by the graveyard."

He looks at me. I wait for him to follow.

"I've had a lot of free time, lately," I add.

He shakes his head and hurries after me. It's a short walk from here to the castle wall, and I wait for him. Patiently.

"Here we are. Need a hand?"

"I... yes."

I help him up.

"Thank you."

There isn't much here to see, but we have a wonderful view of the sky. The sun is setting, now, which means that it shrinks and dims and glows a warm red, turning nearby clouds to pink and gold, casting long and slanted shadows. The courtyard stretches below us, but, from here, we can see a small Hoshidan garden that someone (Reina, probably) has been cultivating, with a few tiny sakura trees and a small pond. The water seems to glow.

Leo seems stunned.

"The view up here..."

"Like it?"

"Why does no-one else come here?"

Vertigo. I looked down, once, and was so scared I almost fell off the wall. "Hell if I know."

He pauses for a long while, looking over, splitting his attention between the rapidly darkening sky and the garden, as if trying to imprint them, make these memories grow over others.

"Thank you for... for showing me this," he says.

I smile.

"But, Takumi..."

"Hm?"

"Did you bring me here for any other reason?" He's staring straight at me, now, with that goddamned smile of his.

"No! Of course not!" I can feel myself blush and I hate it.

"Really? You play chess."

"I..." That doesn't make me a Nohrian. There's a difference between optimizing all encounters and planning encounters ahead; between building yourself exits and building yourself entrances.

I want to tell him this, but cannot find words that I know would not insult him, so I tell the truth, instead.

"I have something to tell you."

"... Okay."

"I..."

I notice, now, he's leaning on the wall. Tired. We need to go back soon. If I stall...

"The sakura blossoms look great this time of year. In Hoshido. I'll take you to see them, if you want."

He looks at me with what I think is surprise. I look away. At the sakura trees. They're barely budding. I sound like an idiot.

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, then opens it again. "Ignoring the inherent dangers involved in such an action at this time..."

Shit, I think.

"Isn't that a romantic gesture?"

"No," I say, because it's true.

"Are you sure!" Not a question. More him knowing he has me cornered. I wonder, for a split second, if he has planned this encounter out.

"That's not what sakura trees represent! At all! They represent beauty and impermanence and - and stuff!" Oh, wow. I sound like a buffoon. Let me go and set myself on fire and put my hair in a blender. I'll be right back. Watch this idiot boy take away my superpower.

"Then why are you blushing?" Hand me Rajinto and let me kill myself.

"Fine! Yes! It's romantic! Reminded me of you! Just! Say! Something!"

We're dead silent for a solid fifteen seconds. I look away. He looks at me.

"I... was going to do the same thing, actually," he decides on.

"Oh, really!"

"I - I had to goad it out of you, so I'd count it as me trying-"

"Oh, really?"

"You competitive bastard."

"At least I did something!"

He's blushing now, too, looking away from me as if he's afraid to show his hand. It's adorable. He's adorable and I'm safe and I don't quite believe it. I think I want to cry. I'm not quite sure.

What matters: Nothing else in the world exists but this. For just a moment. Just us and the sound of the wind blowing over the castle walls, so strong and fast and overwhelming that we can just let it take us far away from here.

If I close my eyes and focus, I can pretend that I am safe.

"This is going to be interesting, isn't it," he says, and I'm jarred until I realize he's talking about the arguing.

"Yeah." Shh, I think. Give me a moment.

"How do you think they'll take this?"

I open my eyes. He's fidgeting, blushing, looking for guards, sitting on the courtyard border wall, back facing me. Always guarded. I'm safe.

What was Castle Krankenburg like, I wonder, for the first time. "About as well as they're taking all our other shit, if not worse."

He doesn't like my answer. I sit down beside him. Our bodies leave long shadows.

"How is your family? Specifically," he asks.

I don't want to think about this, Leo. That's why I brought you here. But once it's brought up, I can't stop myself, everything I've tried to avoid coalescing into a rush of fear I can't control. I am given the distinct urge to jump. "I mean, they're not too bad. Just the standard "you're a disgrace to your family and your country and I do hope you outgrow this childish obsession in time to produce a viable heir, you selfish cur". That sort of thing. They still love me, though, and Sakura's cool with it."

"... holy shit," he says.

"I mean, that was just Ryoma, and he's sort of an ass about this sort of thing in general. I think Camilla talked him down. And, if it means having a stable relationship with Nohr, he's all for it, as long as the nobles don't get too pissed off."

"We're teenagers. If anything, this is a strategy liability." He says it like he's serious.

"The teen breakup that drove two nations to war!" I say, because I don't want to be.

"No. Just... no."

"Too soon?"

"Too soon."

He thinks we can survive this, I realize. And he's trying as hard as he can to make that happen.

I grip his hand so hard my knuckles go white.

"Hey!"

"What, you're not okay with holding my hand _now_ , but you're fine when I'm helping you up a staircase? _Holding hands_? After you and Odin went and - "

"It's - it's different!"

"Oh, come on."

We look at each other. My heart breaks.

"... You're awful."

"You're adorable."

"I... You, too."

And I am so, so afraid.

* * *

"Called it. T-Takumi asked Leo out."

"Oh my god! My little Leo has a _boyfriend_ now?"

"C-come on. Don't pretend you didn't expect this." I sip at my coffee and glance around. No-one else has noticed us, because no-one else is awake at ungodly hours. (Except for Leo and Takumi, I think, and I suppress a laugh.)

"Well, I don't think anyone can truly plan a teenage confession."

I scrape at my plate. Camilla and I wake up so early that we eat leftovers from the night before, and I think Hinoka cooked. She tries hard. At least.

"You know this is a bad idea," I say.

"What, did you want me to interfere with their budding romance?"

"I w-watched you goad on Takumi!"

"I'm sorry?"

Shit.

"I - Hoshidan paranoia."

"Really? That's your excuse?" She says it angrily, as if she hates how I can hide behind my family when she can't. She's better than it all. I'm part of it.

"You'd be nervous if you grew up in Shisaragi." I blink back memories. They're not all bad. I learned from some.

She stops pretending to eat, pushes her plate away.

"I... I thought it would make them happy. I mean... Hinata and Odin... "

She realizes that she's broken her own argument and falls silent. We look at each other, unnerved. I'm unnerved. I don't know about her.

"...Oh, have you heard about Xander and Hinoka? Hana saw them drinking together after our last battle!" I say.

She jumps right in. "Oh, really? You'll have to tell me, later."

"Okay, then! I'll go talk to Ryoma about... stuff. See you around!"

"Goodbye, princess!"

"Goodbye!"

I don't move. Neither does she.

"Do you think they'll be okay?" I finally say.

"No. But they'll be together. Leo needs the physical protection, and Takumi needs the stability. And they'll know the layout of anywhere they go within the two countries most hostile to them, so..."

Wait, what?

They can't leave. They cannot leave. They'll die. And, if Takumi dies, what - what am I going to do? "Y-you're not _actually_ planning on - "

"They are."

I want her to be lying, and I know she's not. Takumi is more important to me than I am to him.

And that's okay, and I'll keep going, and it's a part of growing up, and I do not cry.

"...I'm going to miss them," I say, before Camilla notices anything.

"Me, too."

***

  
We went home, after Garon died. After we had swept Akanos mostly under the rug. To visit Elise, supposedly, though I stopped trusting my siblings after -  
After Xander did a lot of things he shouldn't have.

It sat at the bottom of a chasm that took ten minutes for the fastest of wyverns to fly to the base of (not including the standard Nohrian prisoner-holes, which some said extended through the earth and flung convicts out into the stars, where they would be eaten by the seven Princes of Hell, according to most respected theologians). The sides were drilled as perfect circles, the largest at the top taking a fortnight to travel the circumference of, the smallest at the bottom still a square mile - but every tier was filled with the coming and going of Capital citizens, with glowing red windows from magicfire furnaces glinting, ready to shoot down any invader that grew near.

The top spires of the castle were visible for miles around, a single steep black spire with a strong southern tilt and a billowing column of smoke leaving its chimney. It served as a watch tower, mostly - though of course at least a dozen assassinations had been performed by a well-placed, patient, and magically-enhanced archer waiting for an absent lord to arrive home.

The red glow emanated upwards for miles around, resembling a second sunset. The heat of Krankenburg could be felt for miles around. One could say many things about Krankenburg, but its citizens never froze.

And the castle was almost certainly the cause of that. It rose from the ground, a feat of engineering, simultaneously powerful and grounded and terrifyingly unstable. There was something vaguely monstrous about it, something inhuman about its uneven angles, its jaggedness. It seemed to stare at the wider Axial, never-changing, yet, through its many perspectives somehow both unknowable and terrifying.

The main castle, easily a quarter mile tall, was composed of two parts. The first and larger was the main body of the castle, where the King and/or Queen and their heirs and lords would live and do business. The rooms were liable to change based on what a person in the castle was looking for, but some fixtures, cemented by the collective imaginations of both Axial citizens and Axial rulers: the ballroom, as long in both directions as the range of the finest of archers, with pillars of black glass rising out of a floor that looked like night, glowing softly underneath; the Throne Room, a single long hallway, coated in gold-trimmed red velvet, tapering to a magnificent (and ruler-customized) throne upon which a sunlike spotlight shone; a servants' quarters that was so deeply mazelike, intricate, and secret-filled that the best and brightest students of the outer circle of Axial would often need years to finally be able to use the Quarters to their best advantage; a wyvern stable containing an estimated half of the world's population of dragons and hogs.

The most interesting rooms, however, were the ones that changed but always stayed the same: meeting rooms, bedrooms, hallways, secret passages - all with the same general bloodred-and-gold-and-violet-on-black theme but would alter to reflect the traveler's emotional state. Legend has it that the only attacker ever to successfully defeat an Axian king on home territory had so strong a will that she was able to alter the entire structure of the castle to be a bright blinding white - but most changes were more subtle, with the guilty seeing longer shadows and something behind every corner, the innocent seeing something shining and beautiful, the disillusioned seeing paintings of the most creative of grotesqueries lining the walls; the mad creating endless looping corridors that would trap their bodies in their self-created clutches. One Lord was always noted to change every room to have stained-glass windows. Another was noted to produce an ethereal cat anywhere he slept. Another was found to be able to alter the lighting of anywhere they went.

This sort of distortion of time and space was the specialty of Nohr. We like to change reality, because we cannot stand our own. We do not like not being in charge, and we are almost certainly not. We both believe that the world is incomprehensible and that we understand it fully. Honesty hiding truth. Most agreed that the castle and the surrounding Krankenburg was not the same size on the inside as on the outside, but no-one could ever agree whether it was larger or smaller, including the dozens of groups of architects put to death after failing to accomplish this very task. Though there were a few who staunchly believed that the castle did not change, but that rather the psychology of its inhabitants and its history so profoundly affected any who entered that one was bound to become lost.

I believe them, because I have a functioning map of Krankenburg. It's tattooed on the inside of my left arm, in almost invisible writing. A part of me, now. I try to study it. It never changes, and yet I get a headache if I look at it when not searching for something.

The second part of Krankenburg was the visitor platform, a circle the diameter of a small town with soldiers and necromantic guardsman guarding the edges a hundred yards off the ground. Runes glowed bright in the middle that would disarm the magic and weapons of any that stepped upon it. Bridges (that no civilian could pass through, but soldiers repaired the shields on every day) lay in a solid overlapping perpendicular starting from a few layers down, accenting the small bridge between the two parts.

The only light source at that point was from the magicfire furnaces of the Senate, feverish and glaring. No foreigner had ever been inside Krankenburg, but many Nohrians had travelled outward, carrying that insane red spark with them wherever they went. They were easy to spot - something in their eyes, their step, their posture, their sideways glances at anything too tall or too short or too quiet or too loud.

If Hell had a castle, this would be it.

And this is my home, and this is where I belong.

I breathe in deep and let the smoke seep back into my bones. I can't feel the buzz of magic, anymore, but this... this is almost better. My head is clear.

I know everything about this castle, and I am coming home, if only for a moment.

***

"Leo!" It's the first time I've seen him since the war, and I miss him. Almost painfully. It leaves a physical pain in my chest to be away from my siblings and now he is here and I know he'll be gone before lunchtime and I want to feel pure and bright and whole again for a little while longer.

"You've grown so much!" He's happy to see me, but he's not focused on me. I run up and give him a hug, anyway. He seems reserved, uncomfortable, as if he's trying to remember who I am, or remember how to use his body in a way that isn't combat. It's going to be fine, I think.

The discomfort doesn't fade.

"Only two inches," I say. Then look at him. He's trying to seem as tall as possible, to still maintain his previous status over me, and holding a backpack that I haven't seen before.

This is going to be a goodbye, I realize. He's not coming back, and he needs me to be as perfect as possible so he can feel good about leaving, about himself, about his family.

"God, I've missed you. How have you been?"

I don't know how to answer. I turn away, as if trying to inflict a tiny amount of guilt. "Lonely," I say.

"I... I understand. So, do you have anything to show me?"

Not what old Leo would have said. The pause, especially. I clench my fists, then remember who I am.

"Yeah! So, _here_ is the first thing I crocheted! Effie taught me." I pull a misshapen beanie off of my shelf. It's pale yellow and has a hole on the top the size of a coin. I've made better, but he needs this. We haven't spoken since I was... Nine? Ten? And he's been in Azura's dimension, so I don't know how old he thinks I am, and he doesn't seem unnerved.

"You're very talented, Elise. That's a beautiful hat." Yep. He thinks I'm nine.

"You're lying," I say, before I can quite stop myself.

"I am not."

"Bet you say that to everyone!" Protip: This phrase saves me at least twice a week.

"Yes, because I see hundreds of little crocheted beanies daily."

"Well, you just have low standards!"

"Well, could you show me something that you're proud of?"

"I..."

Do I?

How old does he think I am, exactly? Two inches in one year isn't that ridiculous, at my age. I don't want to show him something that lets him know I'm acting.  
I made him a scarf. One he'd really, really like.

"Not really," I say. "I don't like anything enough yet to really get good at it."

"Except for magic."

"Hey!"

"I haven't told anyone yet."

I'm not ashamed of my magic. My mark burns right between my shoulder blades, a pale and sunny green. I'm nearly incapable of offense, but I can put things back together. Walls. People. Relationships. No, I'm ashamed of how I couldn't use it. I got death counts in, every day. I got nightmares. "Oh, I've told everyone. That's not -"

"Really?

"I... Xander didn't want me to fight, and... I didn't want to start rumors. He... was keeping me locked in my room, and... I didn't want things to look bad. But, now, I can talk about it! Just say that it awakened late. Who knows? Maybe I'll have to use it, one day."

"Let's hope not." There's a scarf on his neck, I notice. He always liked scarves, but it's summertime. Maybe it's winter in his Deeprealm? No, he's not wearing anything else wintry, and he hasn't taken it off.

That's where his Mark is.

And he's been acting strangely.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"It's... fine."

I swallow. He knows, I think. That I know, now. My face is showing it, and I don't care. He wanted to be a powerful magician when he was younger, carrying Brynhildir around everywhere, practicing at the worst possible times.

I don't know who he is, now.

"Elise?" He kneels down to my height. I look at him, let him see how I have changed.

"Yes?"

"I'm going to have to go somewhere -"

"I heard about Takumi and you, you know." Though not about your Mark, which would have been nice of you to tell me.

I add, "I'm not _stupid_."

He looks at me, then smiles. Grins. "Well, that's good. I'm sure you know the basics. I don't know when we'll be back, and I won't be able to keep in touch, and I'll miss you."

"I... I know." This shouldn't be happening, I think. You were supposed to come home and things would go back to normal and we could all pretend that the war never happened, that Garon never went mad. That the worst part of our lives could be devoured whole by brotherly love.

"Elise, look at me," he says, and I do.

"You're going to be a wonderful princess. You're inspiring and curious and sweet, and the entire _country_ loves you. I understand that that's not what you want, but know that you're lovable. And very, very good at acting."

"This is a goodbye forever speech, isn't it?" Because I am still young, no matter how hard I try.

"Clever girl. I... I'll be watching you. News travels far, in Nohr. And... whatever you decide to do, I'll support you. You're going to do great things."

"I don't _want_ to do great things," I say. Start crying. He hugs me, and I pull away, stand up, start looking for his scarf.

"I just... I want a family. For once in my stupid life." It's at the bottom of the chest at the foot of my bed, where I keep my old staves, broken needles I'll repair someday. I put it out to him. It's dark blue and shell-stitched and I want him to keep it and forget I ever cried.

He takes it and looks at it, then me. I think he's trying to figure out how old I am, because this isn't the work of a ten-year-old.

He peels off his scarf, and I see the square on his neck. A neat square of scar tissue, and he puts the scarf I made him over it. Puts his old scarf in his backpack, delicately. Everything he does is now delicate and I have no idea why and know exactly why.

"Elise," he says, "we're the Nohrian heirs. Some things in life we just don't get, and we have to work around."

"... I know," I say. Old Leo would have followed that up with something about inheriting a grand legacy.

New Leo stands in the doorframe and lets me cry without guilt, without feeling the weakness implied in his uneasy support, and I am grateful, even as I am angry.

"This isn't going to be easy, no matter how hard you try to sound wise and shit," I say, and it feels good.

"I didn't know you were old enough to swear."

"Oh no," I say, completely deadpan. "What'll my brother do if I start swearing. It's the end of the world."

He laughs, a little, and I do too.

"You're too young to pretend to be jaded."

I want to do something. I want to be able to do something. My brother is about to leave, about to take his life into his own hands, about to do something, and all I can do is be what other people want and I am appalled with myself.

"Leo," I say. I'm not sure what I'm going to say next until I do.

"You're a bastard," and I punch him.

***

We could still stay. I know this. He knows this. We're powerful, and we're used to this. If we wanted, we could break this world down to its very core.

We're leaving because we want to. We're leaving because this world wasn't made for us, and so we're not going to bother living in it. We have the ability to make the world be exactly what we want it to be, in our minds, and it doesn't matter what's real or not - just what feels real.

The only people that ever want anarchy are the ones that'd survive it.

If we were more sacrificing, we could improve the lives of thousands like us. But I'm scared and he's angry and we'd never get anywhere. And there's nothing left of us to sacrifice - no. I don't know how I'd survive if anything more was taken from me.

The moment Leo tells me to pack I'm ready. It's him that lingers for the last few months, him that makes me show him around Shirasagi. He doesn't want to go, but feels like he needs to. I want to go and know I shouldn't. 

We spend a lot of time together. Some of it is sex. Most of it isn't - it's talking, hiding, listening. Leo knows every single nook and cranny of Castle Krankenburg, and I know everything there is to know about Shirasagi, and Leo can make bugs and I can make us quiet and we both know more about our world than anyone before or since.

The world feels strangely distant. I am aware that I can impact the world, but it doesn't feel real. I feel as if I am watching someone else live my life, that every action I take has a hundred-second lag and yet moves by to fast for me to see.

The world is loud. Things either enrage me or do not affect me. I didn't cry when Kaze died, but I wanted to break Hinoka's arms after she put food on my plate. I'm sick of being treated like a child. It makes me feel afraid.

This isn't normal, but we don't talk about it with anyone, because it doesn't feel right. This isn't good. This won't get us what we want. And we're done with feeling like we shouldn't exist, so we aren't ourselves. Ever, if we can help it.

The war broke us, I think. Or maybe it started sooner - maybe the day we were given our weapons and told we belonged, we thought that goodness meant power. Maybe the day our fathers died, we thought that love meant abandonment. Maybe our fates were sealed the instant the divine dragons fave their power to our ancestors, god knows what that means. Hopefully, nothing, but we aren't lucky enough for that.

I get philosophical sometimes. My existential anxiety is acting up, as a side effect of my regular anxiety acting up. I don't want to eat, today, because if I do I'll get bloated and taste bile every time I move. I still eat. I was right.

It's the combination of every little thing that gets to you, because you expect the big things to happen again. There are skeletons piled up in your closet and you've shoved them in so hard you don't even remember that they're there. Sweep up the bonedust.

Weather the storm. Survival shall be your reward. No-one ever promised that living would be nice.

You cling to the shore because you are afraid of falling into the ocean. Death scares you because you want it.

Sometimes, I forget to breathe.

Sometimes, the only way I can go to sleep is knowing that I can kill myself if things get worse.

Sometimes, I want my entire body to be smashed into a lifeless bloody pulp and don't know why.

Sometimes, I do, and I don't know if it's worse.

Sometimes, I look in the mirror. My face looks strange; it does not seem to belong to me, and sometimes (I do not like to think about this and I do, every day) I try to change what I see, the jawline wrong, the cheekbones alien, something about the shadows and highlights treacherous and doubtful.

We don't talk about this, but we want to.

Correction: I want to, and I think Leo doesn't want to and yet needs to. He's very good at walking around what I mean.

Case in point:

"I want you to hit me as hard as you can," he says.

"No," I say, because he's still weak. He tried to get on a horse last week, and his legs were shaking. I had to catch him. He wouldn't look me in the eyes for a day.

I could kill him, I realize. I could kill him. I'm not going to, but it wouldn't be hard. Wouldn't be hard at all, and this terrifies me. I am a child, and I have to take care of Leo, because if I do not take care of Leo he is going to kill himself, and I'll either feel it or I won't, and if I don't want to feel the pain and I don't want to feel the numbness.

Something is missing. I feel like I am possessing myself. Badly.

Some days, I am better at hiding it than others. Some days, I feel normal.

Some days, I scratch my skin so hard I leave a scar. It's not hard - five minutes straight on a single centimeter square will do it.

"Takumi, I need this."

"No, you don't."

You just want to be a prince for the last time.

You just want to hate me for giving everyone an excuse to hate you.

You just want to feel angry, because feeling angry is terrifying and so you've been pretending you aren't for years.

You just want this roiling paranoia stuck deep inside you to be proven right for once.

And I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of knowing I feel that way, too.

What happened to _you_ , today? Sakura told me she was gay. Sakura is the only legitimate child of Sumeragi. Sakura told me that she has a half-brother somewhere, that Sumeragi had an affair, and she wouldn't tell me who he was, and I'm not going to sleep out of fear it was Hinata. Did Elise tell you something worse? You usually don't act up like this.

Something worse?

I want to give you comfort and don't know how.

You still want me to fight you, but I missed the last thing you said, and I don't want to make you repeat yourself because that always pisses you off the same way making noises pisses me off.

I'm so, so tired, and if I don't do something productive today I'm going to hate myself.

"Leo, do you ever get that feeling that you're not feeling the emotions that you're supposed to? That you're numb, or something? That something deep inside you broke for no real reason and now you're on emotional power saving mode and you're just going to glide across the surface of the pond until you hit the shore and maybe that means one day waking up and being happy and maybe that means not waking up?"

"Someone might be listening," you say.

I don't care.

"I don't care," I say, aloud. It feels oddly nice, a warm fuzzy yellow feeling. Like what happens when a butterfly goes out in Shirasagi noon gets put into a bottle. 

"I don't care because we're leaving. We both know it. We're going to leave, either physically or mentally, and God I hope I don't have to stay in this goddamned castle."

"Takumi, you're scaring me."

"You want to fight? I'll fight. Stand up, Leo."

"Takumi, you're acting strange."

"Damn right I am. Answer my question."

"Don't we all?"

"No, Leo."

He looks at me. I look at him. He has bags under his eyes. He's shaking, too, and I can't tell if it's from weakness or cold or bad legs or something worse. I want to reach out and steady him. He'd rather fall. I don't think that's right, but I'm not really in any sort of position to say something, now, am I?

I either have someone neurotic or no-one at all, and there is nothing better than being around someone that likes to hear what you have to say. I treasure Leo like nothing else, and he scares the living hell out of me.

He seems angry, now, and if he was stronger I think he'd be seriously considering doing something ill-advised and physical at me, the sort of thing that leaves a stain. Now, he just clenches his fists and tries not to cry and manages to pull it off while looking princely.

That takes practice.

Frustration is a bitch.

Some days, I don't have the motivation to do anything. Other times, I feel like I am dragging myself along, forcing myself to do more, better, even as I feel my body disintegrating. The world did not make a place for us, and so we shall clear a place ourselves.

The more I learn about culture, the more convinced I am that its entire purpose is to be systematically destroyed on an individual level. The tower. Chaos versus order.

"Well, you win, then."

"I'll still hurt you. I just won't punch you. I don't want to knock you over."

"That's the point. I want you to do as much as you can to me. Do you know what it's like to look at yourself and feel ashamed? My body won't do anything I need it to, anymore. My mind is slow. I want to force it to work."

He has a smile that shows me he's not all there. Frenetic, unrestrained, and we are in no way, shape, or form emotionally prepared for the sort of emotional attachment we've made. At least, not now. Moving home was stressful for the both of us. Maybe this will go away when we leave.

Then again, maybe it won't, and we're going to have to deal with it.

"Only if you hurt me first."

"I'm sorry?"

"If you hurt me, I'll do it back. Fair?"

Not fair. It's a terrible idea. We're going to be a disgusting murder-suicide splattered on the plaza, and pain is the only time I feel like I belong in my body and I hate myself for it.

I think I want to tell him this. Maybe when we leave. Probably when we leave. I'm close to telling him now; I'm too tired for fear. Too... loving, I think. Leo is something new and whole and bright, and I want a single moment to just be my old destructive self with a brand new toy.

Just give me this.

We make eye contact.

He grabs my arm, pulls a knife from somewhere in his pocket.

"We'll start small, then." He pricks the inside of my forearm, a single drop of blood beading out. I feel some small and perverse pleasure. I'm deathly afraid.  One of my friends has a long thin scar on the inside of their arm from when they were found in a blood-soaked bathtub. 

"Stop."

"Thank you." He throws his knife to the floor. It skitters. I don't see where it lands.

"And now you understand why I am so reluctant to do what you say."

"Why do you want me to hurt you," he says. 

"Why do you?"

"Because - "

And then a pause.

I let him fill the silence with his thinking.

"You know that feeling when someone talks about your future and then your realize that you never really understood that you had a future and you were just going along with whatever happened to you? That the idea of you going on was so deeply unpleasant to you that it didn't occur until someone made it occur to you?"

I nod.

This feels more dangerous than anything else I've done in years, and somehow it still doesn't register.

Today is a bad day. Most days, I feel things, even if they're muted. Today, I feel like I'm being poked through heavy armor.

I've felt more extreme after seeing Leo, I realize, because he forces me to deal with things that I don't want to think about. And, if that means that we come to conclusions that aren't equitable to the status quo, I can think of no better way to prove our commitment than to stick to our guns.

I want to get better. I want him to be better. I want to be away from this terrible place and I don't want to be in pain anymore and thinking this feels strangely wonderful.

"We're going to have to talk about things," I say, "if we want this to work."

"No, shit,"

"Do you still want to leave?"

"Of course not," he says, immediately.

I pause, to let him think it through.

"Yes," he decides.

"That was fast."

"I... I'll tear myself apart if I think it through more. I... I want this. I was going to ask you, actually."

I nod.

I had imagined this conversation as a slow and reasoned discussion through which the two of us came to a mutually beneficial solution. Resolutely descending, streaked with a dark scarlet orange. We were going to be two brave warriors that left because we had to.

Instead, the world seems soft and out of focus. I hold his hand.

I don't want to let this go.

***

"I'm leaving," I tell her. I'm terrified. Have I packed everything?

"Where to, brother dearest?"

"... Away." It's not important. And why the hell is she talking so loud? We're in the foyer, not her private soundproofed quarters. Did Xander fire all the servants and banish our siblings, or has Camilla just forgotten?

"I'm assuming that this isn't on some sort of diplomatic journey or postwar vacation?"

"Have you spoken to Xander, recently?"

"Not today, no. Why?"

"Ask him about me, if you get the chance."

"I... oh dear." She stands up to look me in the eyes. I'm almost as tall as her, now, and she looks imposing in the half-light. 

"Yesterday. During his visit to me. He came in early. Takumi was there. We were in a... compromising position."

"Ah."

She's expecting me to say something, which is when I realize I didn't plan this out at all. I'm not even sure why I'm telling her I'm leaving. Elise would be better at breaking the news. Elise is good at this thing, I've learned. 

"When will you be returning?"

Never sounds bad. "When it's safe."

"So, when you two break up?"

Fuck you, Camilla. "I believe that Niles intends on telling everyone he sees about us."

She looks surprised, which doesn't surprise me.

"So, yeah. And I think Oboro's pissed off, too. Especially about Hinata."

"...I - do you need help packing," she says, now and finally serious.

"Can you, please?"

She's barely listening to me. Focused, and now runwalking up to her room. "Takumi came by, earlier, but he was... roundabout. He should have most of what you should need, but I found a bag of toiletries and first aid you might want. And your Witches' Mark."

"In the same bag?" I don't remember where she sleeps, I realize. I follow her blindly. Her room is close to the entrance, coated in locks.

"It's for if the castle gets attacked and a messenger needs to flee. Witches' Marks are powerful, if you know how to use them." The door swings open, and she hands me the bag sitting on her bed. It's heavier than I expected, but well put-together and sturdy.

"Whose bag was this?"

"Jakob."

Jakob had a bag in which he held a bit of my skin. Wonderful. "Messenger my _ass_. He was going to look for Corrin."

"Now, you know I don't _gossip_ , Leo." 

"Really." 

"I just take every opportunity available to me." 

I zip it open, sifting through the contents. At the top, there's a small soft rectangle wrapped in a handkerchief that I pretend not to see - but it's filled with bandages, cantrips, toothbrushes, repair kits. A gold mine. Figuratively.

A voice in my head tells me that I can't do this, that I need to stay and fight, that I have a duty to help others around and like me and that what I'm doing is a profound evil and it will not stop like the shining sun. I honestly wish I was as sociopathic as I acted, that my moral compass was as pragmatic as me. That I didn't have to feel so guilty over what I do to survive, the lies I tell, the people I hurt. This voice in my head is louder than I am, rattles around in my brain and does not let go. Someone once told me that angels were forgiving and pure and I laughed. Angels don't care. Angels aren't human. 

What I do and will continue to do is a sin and I know it and I'm too weak to change but not too weak to let myself forget it. 

I think I've lost hope in the possibility of social change. 

"Can I take it? Is it safe?"

"Yeah, sure. Jakob doesn't have to know. Is - is your scar better?"

"The skin's growing... normally." I put my hand over the right side of my neck. Habit, now. Elise's scarf is soft.

I zip up the bag and stand, and she leads me back out to the foyer and opens the door for me. I step out, waiting for my wyvern to show. I'll use it to fly by Takumi's window, and then we'll leave.

"I'm so sorry," she says, as we wait.

"For what?"

"For... for everything."

"Castle Krankenburg destroys all those who enter," I say. Reflex, now. I don't want to think of Camilla like this. I don't want Camilla to make me remember the worst parts of her, the obsessive, the suffocating, the adoring - and I don't want her to remember me as the pragmatic, the pedantic, the uncaring.

"I... come back, Leo. I'll miss you."

I think of Elise. Of Krankenburg, and everything I did to stay alive, and how living here has stained my soul. Of Azura, and I close my eyes.

I don't want to come back, and I'm not going to try.

"... I can't promise you anything." Something swoops in behind me.

She's still. I can hear her saying nothing.

"I understand."

I nod and turn around and get on my wyvern and raise my reins.

"Godspeed, Leo."

"... Thanks."

***

Kamui told me they were leaving. That she and Azura were going to leave because they're gay and don't want to break their spell, ruin the peace they've made before it has a chance to set in. Ruin their legacy. She's coming into my room, now, to say goodbye, and I'm so happy to see her I can't contain myself. I run up to her and give her a hug and I don't want her to go. "Hey, Kamui!"

"Hinoka!"

I let her go, look at her. I don't recognize her and I pretend to and that is perfectly fine, a person can change and still remain the same person, with one thing leading to another and another and always affected by the things that happened to it. "So, you're leaving today?"

"Yeah! I'm so excited!"

She's not excited. She's nervous. She doesn't want to leave and it's obvious and everything she's done or said for the last month broadcast loud and clear that she regrets every action she's made and I want to support her because she needs this. Needs something stable. I heard about Krankenburg. "Really? That's - that's great!" I say. Lying.

She looks aside. Around at my room, trying to figure out what I've done with my life, probably uncomfortable with my devotion to her that ended with forces outside of my control bringing her back, and I want to tell her how she helped me through the most terrible time of my life and I cannot.

I can't tell her anything.

"I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to talk to you that much," she says. Melancholy. Shameful. Always.

"I'm sure you were busy!"

"And... I'm sorry I got Setsuna killed."

Be what she needs for once. Be good enough for her, right now. "You did your best! I - I would've done worse, in your situation!" And it's true and I mean it, every word. I mean every word I say. A promise. I want her to know that I shall do my best to help her and show this through my every action, my reckless sincerity. All my effort, sent towards her.

"Hinoka, you don't have to pretend not to hate me. I've done... I've done some horrible, horrible things."

"I don't hate you!"

She looks at me. Her eyes flash bright red in the sideways candlelight, glowing like the setting sun.

"Then that makes you the only one, then." She runs her fingers through her hair, looks away, and I swallow.

"I..." A long pause. I can smell her fear.

"I believe you. And that means a lot to me, Hinoka.

"Thank you."

She smiles at me, like a child.

"Well, I'd best be going now. Take care!"

And I know it's wrong, I know I shouldn't care about her, know that every fiber of my attachment of her has been a self-destructive obsession and she knows it, knows Camilla and I love her to hate ourselves, and I still don't want her to go, don't want to learn how to exist without her.

***

We're leaving tonight. We've packed, successfully gotten a wyvern to like us, successfully stalled for time in Valla. Leo's going to be at my window in a few minutes. Last thing left is disguises.

Which means I need to cut my hair.

I look at it in the mirror. It's deeply inconvenient - I started keeping it in a ponytail because it would get snagged on things in battles. In Hoshido, it's a sign of power, of masculinity - but it's also a sign of royal legitimacy. The princes never cut their hair, and the princesses keep theirs short. They say it allows the dragons in, forcing women to change, forcing men to stay the same.

It's bullshit, but it's ritualized, traditionalized, and if I cut my hair it's the same as me snapping the Fujin Yumi in half or abdicating the throne or surrendering. I am no longer a Hoshidan prince. I have abandoned my post. I am no longer Prince Takumi, second son of Sumeragi, third in line for the throne, chief tactician-in-training for the Hoshidan army.

I'm just Takumi, the boy who ran away.

I undo the ponytail, let it fall. There are still short clumps, close calls, and they stick straight out. Hilariously.

I grab my knife.

It's never easy to break something that's been enchanted, and my hair is no exception. I spend a solid minute trying to get the knife to dig in, to cut it, but my hair remains, shining white and gleaming, almost a light source.

I throw down the knife in frustration. It sticks into the floor, handle up.

Ryoma tried to cut his hair, once. Started from the back. Left these nice cascading curls that make him look like some sort of lion. Said it was easy, once he realized he didn't want to be the prince, anymore. That cutting your hair was the acceptance of the removal of a bond.

I don't want to go. I do not want to leave my country. I would love nothing more than to be a ruler, a tactician, and I am being forced to leave because I am seen as something unholy, and the bond between me and the Dawn Dragon has not been broken. Will not break.

Even after everything.

I cannot bring myself to hate my family, even after everything they have done to me.

My mother was killed by an assassin. Fairly standard procedure for Queen Consort. I was... shaken by it. Deeply. I was her favorite, and she was mine.

My mother died before showing me who my father was. I redoubled my efforts to be good for Sumeragi, secured the Fujin Yumi. It felt... right. I would spend hours trying to get away from the castle, from the lies.

That was the thing. Krankenburg teaches you to kill. Shisaragi teaches you to lie. About everything - where you were, what you think. The difference between politeness and deception is blurred until I no longer know or care what the truth is. Harsh punishments for not being good enough. I sometimes wondered if Sumeragi tried to live through us, tried to make us perfect to make up for the war so close it sank into our bones.

When they took Kamui, Hinoka went insane. Broke completely in two. Hinoka made up for Mom with Kamui, doing her absolute obsessive best to be the loving force she wanted, and, when Kamui was taken, she had nothing left to do but to devote her life in search for her. And thus we were dragged by our sister into a life of fighting.

Ryoma and I didn't want to fight. Rajinto and the Fujin Yumi were not made for extended fighting - they were made for besting challengers, putting down bandits, but Hoshido was not built for fighting a war, and so we were sent to the front lines.

Sumeragi was killed in battle, and I honestly cannot say whether I miss him. Mikoto took the throne. Mikoto was a nervous woman, nagging, nitpicking. We were always wrong, and, if we thought we weren't, we were going crazy.

I spent more and more time away, hunting, making myself calm. The world was incomprehensible, but I only needed to ride out the worst of the wave, keep my head above water, and soon the tides would recede and I would be safe.

And I have failed. Or, maybe, this was not a game I was meant to win.

I hold my breath.

***

Night one of celebrations, and I've cornered down Xander. To talk. 

Let me keep thinking that. This castle is a work of art, and there's not a grammaticaly-proper compliment that follows after that statement when you've done five shots.

No responsibilities. No-one listening. Just what's left of the fighting force and the Vallan castle and a bottle of wine and no-one left to see what I'm about to do.

"Hello there."

"Ryoma?"

"You seem - "

Xander blinked at me loudly. He's angry. I'm conscious enough to tell that he's angry and I should leave? 

" - to be having a fine time by yourself and I hope you have a wonderful time."

"I'm drunk enough to say yes if you ask." Something's switched on in him and his voice sounds like sin, like someone poured a panther out of a small glass bottle. 

"Really," I say, and I hope I sound coy. 

I don't want to think about this. I want for Xander to pull me into a black hole and never let me out and to never have to think about what I did to Takumi ever again and I am so, so sorry I failed you and I've never been both naked and sober in front of Xander and he slips in tongue and I want to stop myself and I want to say sorry and I know that I never, ever will. 

We won't talk about this. We never talk. He drives me insane and I hate him and it's never going to happen. I fall in love too fast and too had and am too cynical to let me stay there for long. This will fade out in a month or two and he does something and my mind goes bright white and I give up, quietly sobbing until the rest of the castle is asleep. 

***

She'd get mad at me for not wanting to talk to her. Of course I didn't. She wasn't my mother. She was a replacement, one that brought a child that Sumeragi adored, one that wanted me to be perfect. I would shy away from her, spend more time alone, grow sullen and angry when disturbed, and she would stop talking to me except for when I did something truly execrable, something she could not help but shout at me for, and I would shy away from her.

A vicious cycle, guaranteed to lead to a dysfunctional family. When Sumeragi died, she knew I resented her taking the throne. The family warped around the tear created by us, Sakura growing increasingly pacific, obsessively terrified with scaring one of us, Hinoka growing increasingly militant, insisting that bringing back Kamui would fix our problems, Ryoma growing more machinelike, hoping to be perfect enough to make up for me.

Or maybe that wasn't what happened at all. My self-reflection is a tool now, one that I use to force me places I need to go. 

No surprise, really, that I got so close to my retainers. My hookup with Hinata was a teenage fling, one that didn't mean all that much to either of us until it blew up in our face. I don't know where Hinata is, right now.

I remember the day that Oboro started to do my hair like me. With the ponytail. I'd probably complained about it before, and she was always trying to do things to comfort me, make me feel less alone.

It had never worked. Her overeager support had been alienating, confusing, and I pushed her away on reflex, every time. No real surprise when she found out about Hinata. Her reaction was to be expected. She told me she loved me, once, and I told her to go to hell.

Maybe I'm broken. Maybe this thing with Leo is going to end with fire and brimstone. Maybe my psychosexual development stopped when my mother died, and now I'm just a petulant child that doesn't know how to love or stop listening to his miserable broken stepmother. Maybe I'm just an idiot teenager and in a month the part of my brain that enjoys things will flip on. That's how it worked for empathy. I cry more, now.

What am I leaving behind? What would I be abandoning? What, in this mess, do I want to come back to?

Why do I feel so beholden to a place that has been determined to break me in any way it can? What can it do for me, except for promise me a calling that it could snatch from me at any time?

I don't feel happy. I feel ashamed. I don't want the kingdom. I want to be loved and safe and not afraid. 

I grab the knife and cut my hair in a jagged line, so short in the back I graze my scalp. Like Sakura's, I realize.

Just like hers.

I snap the Fujin Yumi over my knee and start to cry. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fun part about this ship is that you can write it literally however you want

**Author's Note:**

> if you don't think about it too hard the setting makes sense


End file.
